Narrative Lyrics

Posted on by chunter

While getting to know more people in the Vocaloid fan culture, I realize that I misunderstood quite a few fans’ attachment to “stories.” I hope that it is easy to understand that a music culture with standards they are nonsense or in foreign (for me) language, that complex lyrics may be overlooked. Furthermore, trends in pop music suggest that the more words a song has, and the more the song relies on them, the more likely it is that the song will be misunderstood, and as a result,  unpopular.

However, if you are aspiring to stand out from the songs released in a single day using a particular virtual voice, a narrative lyric can go a long way, if your audience relates to it properly.

I think my surprise and misunderstanding may have come from reappropriation of words that already exist, because I consider a narrative lyric (a “story song”) a normal aspect of lyric songwriting. The desktop electronic musician is the current and future generation’s folk musician, so it’s nice to see a narrative lyric style carry on. I favor anything that gets new people interested in music.

Sorry to bring this up after it had pretty much died, but I had to respond to this. If you create a fanfiction/story that fills in these things that are left blank, you ruin the vibe by taking away that vague space that people could make interesting. That big story you're making up is shooting itself in the foot. ...uh, you're not equating vocaloid story-based songs and big story arcs with fan fiction, are you? Because songs like Bad End Night, Servant of Evil, and Kagerou Project are all just as much a part of the vocaloid "canon" as more regular pop or rock songs like Ai Dee and Donut Hole. (For the record, I love those too, even though I'm fonder of the stories overall.) And you don't have to worry about canon being made less vague even with story-based songs. I say this as a fan of 'em since 2009. There are so many story-based songs and the personalities conflict so much that it wouldn't be possible to pin down the personality of any vocaloid. I mean, compare Len's personality in Servant of Evil with Spice! or HoneyWorks' Crybaby Boyfriend arc or Monochrome Dream-Eating Baku or Synchronicity or...I could go on. The personalities are only valid for those particular songs or arcs, so the story-based songs are never going to "ruin" anything - because they're all equally canon. You could make an entire anime from story-based songs and you wouldn't ever limit any of the vocaloids to a particular personality. ...Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, and I'm completely off on the wrong foot? (I agree with you that vocaloid fandom'd exist even without stories...I just think it'd be much less interesting and lively if it did. It could probably exist without normal pop/rock songs too, but that'd be equally bad.) permalinkparentreportgive goldreplybuffer [–]chunter16 1 point 6 days ago Thanks for explaining, I was in fact talking about people who use straight-up fanfiction as opposed to writing a song that tells a story (which has its own caveat the same as in all songwriting.) I think what you described is more like the normal acting that goes with singing any song, which ceases as soon as the song ends. Nobody really confuses that temporary personality with the singer, even when the song is particularly personal. I talked to others (from different fandoms) about how nobody ever likes every single principle of it, yet, you'll inevitably rub with the person who thinks it's so impossible for you to say you like X and Y but you don't like Z... In the end I make up songs in a laptop, and I'm just here to find music I won't find anywhere else. I know I'm supposed to accept certain things, but a word like canon means "rule" and comes from the Papal Bulls that declared documents as being divinely inspired for inclusion in the Bible. I take it as a heavy word for people who want to assert their ideas on others. permalinkparenteditdeletereplybuffer [–]greymousie 1 point 6 days ago Thanks for explaining, I was in fact talking about people who use straight-up fanfiction as opposed to writing a song that tells a story (which has its own caveat the same as in all songwriting.) My apologies...I misunderstood you. (I did briefly wonder if you really did mean fan fiction, but I couldn't figure out where that came from, so I figured you must've meant the songs.) you'll inevitably rub with the person who thinks it's so impossible for you to say you like X and Y but you don't like Z True. Everyone has different tastes, and that's what makes fandom interesting. I wouldn't want it to be any other way. As long as everyone's respectful, it's all good. In the end I make up songs in a laptop, and I'm just here to find music I won't find anywhere else. I don't make songs myself (I don't really have the talent or inclination), but for finding new songs, I'm the same way. But with a different focus. I like regular pop/rock vocaloid songs, but I feel like I could possibly find songs like that elsewhere, minus the singing-robot aspect. The kind of story-based songs that vocaloid has, though? I can't find that anywhere else. The closest you get is folk or filk or perhaps showtunes, and none of those are quite the same, nor do they have the same emotional impact for me that some vocaloid songs do. I would probably never have gotten into vocaloid fandom if it weren't for them, and I'm glad I did.