Lyric Reciting: An opportunity to be douchebags.. or something more?

(Shitty drawings done by yours truly)

I want to talk today about a phenomenon I've noticed, not only in others, but in myself as well.

Now, I go to a lot of concerts and about half of them turn out to be pretty hipster. I'm not talking "Dude, this band is so underground there's only five other people here, shit yeah" hipster because I have neither the time, money, or patience to mess with that Stierscheisse.

I guess you'd call the bands I see Mainstream Hipster.

Bands like They Might Be Giants, Decemberists, Band of Horses, Tally Hall...

Not exactly well known, but the average person knows maybe one song or has at least vaguely heard of them.

I've noticed this phenomenon before, but it stuck out particularly to me at the Decemberists concert I attended last week. As I looked at the crowd around me, I noticed that an inordinate portion of the people were singing along. And I'm not talking the singles or Best Of, I'm talking EVERY lyric to EVERY song, including those from the album that had come out a mere three weeks earlier.

And I realized I was doing the same thing.

I feel like I should put this out there before moving on: I am a lover of lyrics.

I adore them.

I don't feel like I know a song unless I can repeat the lyrics, including the inflections put on each word by the singer, and often all of the harmonies involved as well.

I am a lady who enjoys intimacy with her music.

I've never felt there was anything wrong with that.

But suddenly, when I saw that so many other people were doing the same thing, I started to wonder if maybe it was kind of a wonky thing to do.

I mean, here we are, paying twenty five bucks, crunched in a tiny standing area after having waited for half an hour (longer for some) in RIDICULOUSLY cold weather (especially wearing chucks, which probably 80% of the crowd had, because you don't wear boots to a concert), and all we can focus on is that Colin fucked up Eli The Barrow Boy by switching the verses up.

I will make a confession.

For the two weeks leading up to this concert, I listened to very little else but the Decemberists.

What I did is nothing short of study for this concert.

I brushed up on songs I hadn't heard in a while, reminded myself of those twistyturnytricky lyrics Colin likes to throw in, crammed on the EPs and songs I didn't like as much, and speedmemorized as many King Is Dead songs as I could.

That was when I realized, the concert was like a test for me. And, apparently, for others.

We weren't being tested by Colin, because not only does he not give a shit (and also I don't think he particularly likes when people sing along) but also it's not like he can see from up there.

No, we study hard and stress out over every syllable of that music so we can demonstrate to our own fellow hipsters just what good of fans we are.

Part of it is that bands like the Decemberists aren't exactly easy to dance to.

And a mosh is basically out of the question.

Though it might be pretty funny.

Pretty much you have the head nod or the toe bounce (i.e. the prairie dog). 

So lyric reciting is one way to be involved in the concert. But that doesn't really explain it entirely.

Maybe it's the threat of mainstream that makes us do it.

I will admit, when I heard Down By The Water on the local soft rock station, a tiny part of me died a little. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing my music and I fully support the Decemberists' right to earn money and well-deserved attention.

But that doesn't stop me from secretly wanting to go up to certain fans and snottily tell them that I think KID is pandering to an Americana audience and that I think they were most enlightened on Castaways and Cutouts.

So maybe it's us hipsterjerks desperately clinging to any shred of legitimacy we can lay our hands on, and so we memorize ALL of the songs, especially those little obscure ones, just on the offchance they play it so we can say "Omigod THIS one, YES!" and feel good about ourselves as we mouth the words and watch the blank stares on those so-called fans around us.

Part of it might also just be the challenge, almost the sport, of it, especially for those like me that aren't particularly good at most things.

Bands like the Decemberists and They Might Be Giants that, by now, have pretty extensive discographies (I own just under 100 songs for the former and over 350 songs for the latter) unwittingly issue a challenge to their listeners.

Something along the lines of "If we can write and perform this many songs, surely, if you care about us, you can memorize them" and, even if we don't especially like certain tunes, we dutifully dedicate ourselves to the task.

Just because we can.

And then there's the theory that we just love the music that much.

I like to think that's at least the biggest part, though I can't deny the rest is part of it.

When I listen to the Decemberists, or any of my favorite bands, the music just moves me in a way I can't quite describe. I want to live in those melodies and stories woven by the words injected into them and never leave, but of course the song has to end and it's not quite the same to just play the same song on repeat.

So I do the next best thing, which is to immerse myself in the music, make it become a part of me, and in some small way, become a part of the music as well. I don't ever have to live without Odalisque or Yankee Bayonet or any of my favorite Decemberist tunes because they're in my head permanently.

When I go to a concert, it's not so much that I'm singing along, but more that I can't not.

I want so, so badly to be a part of the magic that's happening onstage that I can't help but to sing along and involve myself in the only way I know how.

And I like to think that's what the other hipsterjerks around me were doing as well.

I like to think that their adoration of Colin Meloy's music was so all-encompassing, so beautiful and loud and pure that they couldn't contain it and so their mouths formed the words that fantastic man penned and shared with us simply so they could feel the music just a little more.

That, or they were douchebags.

Whatever.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.

Thanks for reading,

Yours,

Amanda.