Re: What are you thinking right this second?

1614
After 25 years of listening, I'm still not sure if David Byrne wrote the most brutally satirical lyrics for the Talking Heads, or the most strangely earnest and naive. If the former is true his cultural criticism has some real zing and his love songs are vacant. If the latter his love songs are so sweet and his cultural beliefs are bizarre.

I know it can be both, but the tone of both song types is identical. It all comes down to the guy in front of the camera in True Stories. Is he for real, or taking the piss? "Look at this mall where people can buy many different things at affordable prices."

The tension keeps them fascinating.

Re: What are you thinking right this second?

1615
losthighway wrote: Wed May 01, 2024 7:57 am After 25 years of listening, I'm still not sure if David Byrne wrote the most brutally satirical lyrics for the Talking Heads, or the most strangely earnest and naive. If the former is true his cultural criticism has some real zing and his love songs are vacant. If the latter his love songs are so sweet and his cultural beliefs are bizarre.

I know it can be both, but the tone of both song types is identical. It all comes down to the guy in front of the camera in True Stories. Is he for real, or taking the piss? "Look at this mall where people can buy many different things at affordable prices."

The tension keeps them fascinating.
You should read How Music Works, it's really good. I don't remember if he talks about what you are pondering, but he goes into how he writes songs.
"Whatever happened to that album?"
"I broke it, remember? I threw it against the wall and it like, shattered."

Re: What are you thinking right this second?

1616
Had a weird linguistic brain spiral today while giving a spelling test. (It was the low group). One of the students was freaking out about how I pronounce the word 'thanks'. Of course on a spelling test you gradually annunciate words way more deliberately than in fluent speech.

Unobserved by me (and probably most speakers) in English we have two sounds. The voiced th: that, those, these. And the unvoiced th: think, thistle, thief.

It turns out my whole life I've pronounced 'thank' as a voiced th. A quick survey of people around me showed that I'm in the minority but not alone. A quick Google search shows that an unvoiced th is probably more proper but there are regional variations.

Now I'm like a stoned teenager lying on the floor repeating a single word until it sounds utterly alien.

Re: What are you thinking right this second?

1618
I recently heard Hozier’s streaming hit “Too Sweet” and thought it was interesting that a singer would aim to sound like solo Chris Cornell. (Maybe he wasn’t aiming for that. Who knows. That’s what it sounded like.) Not shirtless, screaming rock god Chris Cornell, but singer-songwriter with session musicians on Jimmy Kimmel Chris Cornell.

Then I popped on one of Cornell’s late singles, and it sounded like Cornell was trying to be Adele.

So maybe Hozier is trying to be Adele.

Re: What are you thinking right this second?

1620
losthighway wrote: Wed May 01, 2024 9:52 pm Had a weird linguistic brain spiral today while giving a spelling test. (It was the low group). One of the students was freaking out about how I pronounce the word 'thanks'. Of course on a spelling test you gradually annunciate words way more deliberately than in fluent speech.

Unobserved by me (and probably most speakers) in English we have two sounds. The voiced th: that, those, these. And the unvoiced th: think, thistle, thief.

It turns out my whole life I've pronounced 'thank' as a voiced th. A quick survey of people around me showed that I'm in the minority but not alone. A quick Google search shows that an unvoiced th is probably more proper but there are regional variations.

Now I'm like a stoned teenager lying on the floor repeating a single word until it sounds utterly alien.
My whole life I've pronounced my L's "wrong" and said for some reason, don't know where I got it, "That's the dark L, I'm from Ohio, that's how we pronounce our L's." Reading to my son, I am now hyper vigilant to try not to make the R-adjacent sound where it doesn't belong (I am his primary connection to English, at least I was till he entered bilingual grade school last September). "Na, dude, you don't have an Ohio impediment, you have a speech impediment." It does fuck with my head a bit, seeing as how I already have some imposter syndrome type issues.
You should just come out to your students as German or something so you don't have to deal with it. Good luck!

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