There are good song lyrics, bad song lyrics and then there are Bernard
Sumner’s song lyrics. Sumner has turned the banal lyrical statement
into an art. Take his words out of the context of the song and their
almost childlike simplicity can be excruciating.
But it’s that very point that makes his lyrics so entertaining. They
survive and prosper in the warm embrace of melody and rhythm. They
don’t attempt to masquerade as poetry (they couldn’t if they tried);
they are wonderfully flawed.
The pinnacle of Sumner’s way with words is also one of New Order’s
finest songs. Regret is the perfect distillation of New Order as a pop
band, but it’s the sheer audacity of the opening line of the chorus
that makes the song: ‘I would like a place I could call my own/Have a
conversation on my telephone’. We’ve all been there, Bernard. A good
chat can cure so many ills.
The debut single from Sumner’s new band Bad Lieutenant, Sink Or
Swim, doesn’t quite reach the same giddy heights as Regret,
although ‘This is the real thing at your door/ Big waves breaking on
the shore’ certainly has a good try. It’s a deeply clichéd couplet of the
girl meets boy variety, but of course that’s the point – the song is all
about misplaced love/lust, and those crashing waves are a suitably
clumsy metaphor.
Sumner has always been open about the fact that he finds writing
lyrics difficult; in a recent interview on Sky Arts he talked about the
random way he pieces his lyrics together. That won’t come as a
surprise to anyone who’s followed Sumner’s work in New Order,
Electronic and now Bad Lieutenant.
But it’s this very struggle with words that makes Sumner such a
likeable lyricist. In the early days of New Order he tried to live up
to Ian Curtis’s darkly poetic legacy. The result was far too much
staring out to sea and being stranded on metaphorical islands. Once he
realised that singing about ordinary day-to-day stuff is just as valid
a route to the soul, things got less cryptic, more real and a
distinctive voice started to appear.
In a 1989 TV interview Sumner was asked whether, as a pop star, you
can take yourself too seriously. His reply seemed to mirror his
approach to lyric writing: ‘Yeah, you can. You can get a bit above
yourself. Like that guy, what’s his name… Bongo.’
The joy of his lyrics is their very simplicity, their lack of bombast.
Twenty years after that statement, it’s guaranteed that the new Bad
Lieutenant album will be free of Bono-style pronouncements. Of course
telephones, doors and the odd wave may feature.
http://chrissharratt.posterous.com/bernard-sumners-still-getting-away-with-it
:\ohwell:
