Lars Eckstein's Reading Song Lyrics deserves a place among the key works of popular music studies. To approach song lyrics as “performed literature” may be nothing new in itself, but the author securely combines scattered existing notions of words in songs to create a practical methodological framework for the analysis of song lyrics. Here, for once, the perspective of literary studies is successfully combined with a multidisciplinary approach. The material is orderly structured and presented, the text accessible and easy to navigate. The reader is led through the complex matter with ease and without ever being bothered by superfluous repetition, even though each chapter may well be read independently. To simply state that the book is a pleasure to read would be an understatement. It is rare to find an academic work written in such a clear and eloquent manner throughout.
The book is divided in two parts, where Part I develops the methodology and applies it on three versions of Scarborough Fair. In Part II, the author commits analyses of three songs spanning from the 16th to the brink of the 21st century. Even though most of the basic concepts of Eckstein's approach may be familiar to song-analysing scholars, the methodology he suggests is both far-reaching and courageous. A tendency which can be observed in many writings on this topic is to conclude that the relationship between words and music is painfully complex and then come up with some good excuse to avoid facing the consequences. Here, the consequences are pursued and considered, whether they are related to the performing voice and its cognitive aspects or to the kinetic aspects of musical sound. The method excels when it comes to the mapping and investigation of the range of contextual dimensions relevant to our reading of songs.
Kramer's concept of songfulness is put to good use in Eckstein's model. However, as the work progresses, the concept is forced to accommodate more than it's strictly meant for. It sometimes becomes a container for the sum of musical meaning unaccounted for in the analyses. The author briefly refers to some highlights from Nattiez, then moves on, leaving the study to beg in vain for more recent and sophisticated approaches to the semiotics of music. Tagg and Clarida's seminal brick Ten Little Title Tunes (2003), for instance, would have a lot on offer here (see Tagg's recent analyses on his YouTube channel etymophony if in doubt). Tagg's work has been disputed by many, which only makes a proper discussion even more appropriate. As Eckstein expands his method, my certainty grows that it is in many ways complementary to Tagg's. As it is, the reader has to make the connection. This is unfortunate, since Eckstein unwittingly uses several of Tagg's concepts on the practical level (hypothetical substitution, IOCM). A more advanced and updated approach to musical meaning and gestures, I believe, would benefit this book greatly and help solve some problems that emerge in its second half.
Part II contains three case studies, in which Eckstein primarily occupies himself with their relations to the respective contemporary discourses of “Englishness'. I am not quite convinced this is the ideal way to demonstrate the freshly outlined method. The two first analyses come closest in following the methodological outline of Part I. The reader gains in-depth knowledge through the discussion of John Dowland's Come Againe about music-making in the Elizabethan epoch. The overview generated from a single song case and 42 pages is astounding and enables the author to bring notable new insights to the field. The second analysis intriguingly starts with a comparison of Jimi Hendrix' live debut in London and the 1811 exhibition of Sara Baartman in the same city, a thought-provoking venture elegantly executed. The choice of a song referring to Baartman, recently portrayed in Abdellatif Kechiche's movie Black Venus (2010), provides an ideal platform for the author's investigation of Englishness/Britishness. The selected song is a broadside ballad, The Hottentot Venus, which comments on Baartman's case in a manner not so easily predictable. Again, Eckstein's rich information is systematically unfolded and presents the reader with questions of music and genre, music distribution, the broadsheet format, the debate surrounding Baartman's exhibition, the discourse surrounding the London theatre riots, and contemporary popular notions of class and race. Both analyses are outstanding from the perspective of literary studies. However, one is left to wonder where the highly-profiled performative and musical dimensions from Part I have gone. How were these songs sung, with what kind of voices, and what impact may accompaniment and manner of performance have made on their overall message?
Arguably, Come Againe and Hottentot Venus are tricky cases for considering aspects of sound and performance. Still, the dimension is sparsely problematised and the analytical limitations poorly accounted for. Paradoxically, the problem takes on even more serious proportions in the third analysis, where we are presented with a recorded song. I cannot quite shake the suspicion that Eckstein's analysis of Asian Dub Foundation's (ADF) Real Great Britain is an earlier work, haphazardly modified to fit the book's viewpoints and methodology. My suspicion is supported by the fact that the author, rather than completing his analysis of ADF, includes two rap songs released after 9/11, seemingly not so much to serve his reading of Real Great Britain as to discuss more distantly related matters. In the ADF analysis (and even more so in the case of Fund^da^mental's Cookbook D.I.Y. and M.I.A.'s Paper Planes) lyrics as well as music are pushed to the background by a traditional 1990s-style media analysis, mainly supported by the generic concepts of music journalism. One example: the horns, we are told, are featured only on this chorus of the album. What horns? What instruments? What do they play? What genre? What words do they interact with? Why, and to what effect? The presence of the horns is merely noted in two lines (they do not signify Jungle). So much for the complex interrelationship between words, music and performance carved out in Part I. Instead we are introduced to a rather coked-up theory of Jungle breakbeats (Eshun) which appears to imply that sampled sounds are heard as something altogether new and devoid of musical or wordly meaning. Thus, the ADF part pleads for a serious revision. Eckstein's points of priority concerning Englishness, nostalgia and nationalism do not suffer unduly from this flaw, but the book as a whole does. The analysis serves its cause, but in a very different, more traditional and shallow way than the book initially propagates. Some old habits die hard. Still, Reading Song Lyrics ranges among the best attempts yet at coming to grips with song lyrics. All the components necessary to facilitate a breakthrough in the way we analyse words in songs should now be at hand. This remarkable book has delivered its part, and in grand style.
