First of all, I must say that Adam Young is not only a extremely talented musician, he is also gifted in photography, videography, and blogging(which I have found to be an extremely difficult and time consuming art myself). Secondly, I have found that I, contrary to most, see Adam Young as being as talented as a lyricist as he is as a musician. I once thought that the words seemed empty, but as I listened carefully I began to draw some lines. Almost all of his lyrics, particularly his latest album All Thing
Bright and Beautiful, hold serious significance. What I found most remarkable about his lyrics is his ability to weave in significant meaning through bold imagery and symbols. These images and symbols, the deeper meaning of his songs, stand out clearly against the backdrop of his blog, Owl City Blog. Blog posts such as Truth and Love as well as What It All Comes Down To and Jesus Will Come Again are obvious examples.Among his various themed posts are blog entries like the ones above that assert that mankind, the human race, needs saving. I won’t get into details but I will encourage you to go read the blog for yourself! Listening to his music after being exposed to the blog was like hearing them for the first time all over again, but better. Give it a shot. Maybe start with Galaxies. He is perhaps more obvious meaning. Then move on to Kamikaze, which, when translated from Japanese, means spirit-wind. As catchy as they are musically, I enjoy listening to these songs for the challenge of picking out Adam Young’s meaning. Nearly every time I find one more image that I had missed every time prior!
So, Adam Young, all this to say that your music (and lyrics) are awesome! Keep writing! And please, come up to Canada! I haven’t gone to an Owl City concert yet!
I'm with you that Owl City's lyrics are really good. I used to loooooove Owl City because he had really great melodies in his Ocean Eyes album. But the weirdest thing happened. I almost instantly started hating the music once I started noticing how autotuned it is, and after I realized that all of it is exactly the same. And I don't just mean the style. He obviously has his own style, but he recycles melodies and chord progressions like craaaaazy. Listen to the melody in 'Cave In' from his Ocean Eyes album, and then listen to 'Hello Seattle' from the same album. The same. Now listen to Galaxie again. Also the same. Now, listen to the synth line at 50 seconds in Kamikaze. Same friggin' melody again. I don't know if it's because he's trying to establish some sort of theme to be attributed to himself, but to me it just seems like he's eternally got that stuck in his head and uses it in all his songs.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, like I said, he does have great lyrics, but since I listen to music for the music, he doesn't get as many brownie points from me as he does from others. I can also really respect him from the point of view of a producer. His albums are reeeeeally well produced. I'm a long way off from being able to make my music sound like that.
I agree with you that his music can become repetitive. The thing is, his music is so unique among all other groups I have heard that it doesn't seem so when played on my typical playlist.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that in his Ocean Eyes album he often sounded auto-tuned. You should see how he sounds live. He actually has quite a good voice. It almost seems like he auto-tunes for effect more than anything else.
I've enjoyed listening to Owl City and I have alot of respect for an artist that can take their music to number one on ITunes (USA) - not that the whole country is the best critic of music but I would think that means something - at least that people enjoy the music. I would also say that many artists tend to have similar melodies in most of their music. It's hard to find an artist that doesn't. Some of my favourite artists tend to stick to similar types of melodies and chord changes. Most western music is centred around only a few chords really - when you boil it down. Having said all this, I also have been entertained, encouraged and dumb-founded by the lyrics by Adam Young. Now that is not something I can say about a lot of artists. Definitely something that I've enjoyed about the new album especially. Also, with a huge platform that he has now - I think its cool that he is starting to be more bold with his faith. Looking forward to what happens next!
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