Heard Rodriguez today while driving to work in my car. I instantly fell in love with his Bob Dylan-y tempo and tone. Then came the song ‘A most disgusting song’ in the playlist.

It was not really a song. Atleast definitely with respect to the fact that nobody was really singing in it. It was more of Rodriguez narrating a story with some light guitar rhythm and riffs. And it was a funny story at that! Funny, and profound.

After listening to the song for about 4 times in loop, I proceeded on to listening to the rest of the playlist. And that’s when two things struck me:

1. Most of Rodriguez is like that – a story narration with some light acoustic guitar rhythm and riffs. Case in point, I’m listening to ‘Cause’ now while I type this. There’s very minimal singing in Rodriguez’s songs. Not atleast in the conventional song sense as one would come to presume anyway. Not that it makes his songs any less entertaining as well. It’s just – a style. I don’t really recall any Bob Dylan from that perspective right now, but will have to listen to it to get a handle on it.

2. Aren’t most good songs like that? Atleast the ones where the artist wants to focus on the lyrics? A story? Blackest eyes by porcupine tree comes to mind immediately -a story of a serial killer. Shine on you crazy diamond. Echoes. Even Vermillion 1, 2 and 3 by Slipknot. Even fucking Wrecking Ball!

While one might appreciate the lyrics and how they blend with the melody in songs, I don’t think I’ve ever really taken a view from a 30,000 feet level about songwriting like this. It’s really just storytelling… in a different format!

Yeah – I know – “Elementary, Watson!” right? Well screw you! This opens doors in my head!

Go listen to the next 10 songs and ‘read’ the lyrics if you have to! There’s billions of stories to extrapolate and imagine!