Forlorn Norm

 

It's been eight months since I featured Norm Burns, and that's just too long. Here we have a pair of songs which are both about love, but which otherwise have very little in common, subject-wise. One is a forlorn expression of sadness at the wedding of a former flame and the other is a celebration of new love. I do think they share something else in common, though - that frequent feature of song-poem lyricism: The artless effort - the use of phrases which are not poetic and/or which are simply not phrased in such a way that they can be rendered effectively in musical fashion. 

For example, in the supper club-y "Lily! Oh White Lily!" we hear the decidedly unmusical phrase "during the wedding ceremony". I also want to pay special tribute to the drummer on this track, who could just as well be a loop of a set of two snare drum taps. The guitarist, on the other hand, seems to be really trying, and a few of those guitar fills are kinda nice. This song goes on forever, doesn't it?  

Download: Norm Burns - Lily! Oh White Lily!

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If you really want to have some fun with artless lyrics, though, I offer up the flip side, "Locked Hearts". These are not so much unmusical as they are simplistic and repetitive, not to mention that they rhyme "Hearts" with, um, "Hearts"

So your love and my love, they are the key to our hearts

So let's find the find the key so that we can open our locked hearts

That rhyme is null and void. 

There only appear to be four lines to the entire lyric, (well, eight if you want to divide each of the phrases into two separate lines.)

Download: Norm Burns - Locked Hearts

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