Yeah, those lyrics to The Byrds tune are nowt short of terrible, but when it comes down to it, if you write decent lyrics and have a great tune to back it up, does it matter if you're just moaning about something? Obviously stuff inside the music industry is generally of no importance to anyone, but there are still some people who pull it off. I think Weezer's Pork & Beans is an example, which they wrote after their label told them to go back and write some hits. Arctic Monkeys' Fake Tales Of San Francisco is another lyrically fine tune that's basically moaning about bands in England pretending to be American in the wake of the rise of The Strokes, and the soap opera that is The Libertines pulled off the whole in-band fighting thing to great aplomb on Can't Stand Me Now.
Are there any decent garage bands out there at the moment who are commenting on bigger issues, and how well are they doing it? I remember hearing The Jeevas How Much Do You Suck? for the first time and thinking that the lyrics were just plain embarassing, but you could argue that sometimes songs like that have to be lyrically very simple in order to connect with the masses, well, they don't always have to be so simple I guess, but sometimes it might be called for. British Sea Power did it well on their last album though with Who's In Control?, which was also asking why people weren't on the street fighting about what was happening in the UK. "Sometimes I wish protesting was sexy on a Saturday night."
Oh, and Axl, basically a complete tool, but with an ace backing band.
