Rush Survivor 2020 - Power Windows - Round 3

[The Letter M]

Power Windows
The Big Money
Grand Designs
Manhattan Project
Marathon
Territories
Middletown Dreams

Round 2's Results:
The Big Money 4 (23.5%)
Grand Designs 3 (17.6%)
Manhattan Project 1 (5.9%)
Middletown Dreams 1 (5.9%)
Mystic Rhythms 8 (47.1%)

07. Mystic Rhythms
08. Emotion Detector

The album closer is out! I think, for me, the opener will be next.

-Marc.

[jammindude]

Please make Big Money go away.

[DTA]

MP

[Dublagent66]

Please make Big Money go away.

Agreed.

[jjrock88]

MP

[pg1067]

Territories...by miles and miles.

[jammindude]

Territories...by miles and miles.

 

Literally my #1 synth era song, and literally the #1 lyrics NP ever wrote. I’m not often dumbfounded by these contests...but to me, this is like voting for Learning to Live first in a IAW survivor.

[Eldomm]

Grand designs

[IDontNotDoThings]

Middletown Dreams


Also, I'm very surprised to see Mystic Rhythms so low. Personally I really love it for its immersive atmosphere, but maybe that's just me.

[Nekov]

Middeltown Dreams

[pg1067]

Territories...by miles and miles.

 

Literally my #1 synth era song, and literally the #1 lyrics NP ever wrote. I’m not often dumbfounded by these contests...but to me, this is like voting for Learning to Live first in a IAW survivor.

I think you and I have traded comments about this before, I simply disagree with you about the lyrics.  It's not that I don't like them; it's just that I don't think they're anything special.  The particular lines you often point to articulate a point of view that had, as of 1985, been articulated many times before in rock music.  I'll give you that it's articulated in a semi-clever way, but I simply don't view it as anything mind-blowing.  The rest of the lyrics follow the same basic theme, and the song contains one of NP's more inane lines (the "better beer" line basically says, "gosh, we're being awfully serious here, but oh, wait...we still have our dorky sense of humor!").  But the lyrics have little to do with why it gets my vote for 7th place on this album.  The music is deficient in just about every way.  MR is just a bit worse, and both of the other songs on side 2 have some fairly strong musical moments.

Your "for me" qualifier notwithstanding, all of the "synth era" albums are divisive, so the comparison to Learning to Live falls flat.  Natural Science would be a better comparison to LTL, and maybe Lines in the Sand would be a decent comparison to Territories.

[Dublagent66]

No sense in getting wrapped around the axil about lyrics.  They will never change how good a song is musically.  Territories has some pretty catchy riffs and I think the synth era is awesome.

[SleeperAwake]

I had to listen to Mystic Rhythms just to be sure we were talking about the same song.    Yeah, I like it very much. One of the best songs on the record, and probably of the entire synth era.

Oh, and...

Please make Big Money go away.

[pg1067]

No sense in getting wrapped around the axil about lyrics.  They will never change how good a song is musically.

Unless it's an instrumental, a song consists of both music and lyrics, and different people place different value on the two elements.  I get that some folks largely disregard the lyrics and focus almost exclusively on the music.  While I value music over lyrics, it is absolutely the case that, for me, bad lyrics can ruin a musically-strong song (and, likewise, great lyrics can make a musically-strong song better).  On the other hand, for me, the best lyrics ever won't save a musically-weak song.  Territories is, for me, a song where the music is not good, so it doesn't much matter if the lyrics are good.  The lyrics are, on the whole, fine, but they'd be better without the "better beer" line (including how it's delivered).