Yeah because I think if you're writing in your native tongue you feel like it's not 'enough' to write as you would speak, and a lot teenagers look in all the wrong places to make their lyrics something 'more' than their ordinary speech, and turn to a thesaurus or dictionary.
I'm not talking about shitty "I don't wanna fight/every single night" lyrics, but ones that have been crafted and carefully chosen, and edited and tested and agonised over.
Like beautiful examples of English lyrics written by native English speakers would be
Quote:
I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
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Or
Quote:
I saw a life and I called it mine
I saw it drawn so sweet and fine
And I had begun to fill in all the lines
Right down to what we'd name her
Our nature does not change by will
In the winter 'round the ruined mill
The creek is lying flat and still
It is water though it's frozen
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I feel like a non-native speaker can't lean on the nuances and quirks of English when writing lyrics. So then it becomes more about just taking their ideas and expressing them simply, but in a way that an English-speaker would struggle to replicate
Like
Quote:
We could nick a boat
And sneak off to this island
I could bring my little ghettoblaster
There's more to life than this
But we'd have to rush back
To the town's best baker
To get the first bread of the morning
There's more to life than this
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Most native English speakers would struggle to write this - the connections she makes between phrases just wouldn't occur to an English speaker in my opinion. Bringing a ghettoblaster and nicking a boat would never be matched with getting the first bread of the morning. There's a particular blend of ideas that non-English speakers bring to the English language - my feeling is that the stories, conversations, song lyrics, poetry than a native-speaker grows up hearing and learning, would mean that a simple verse like this would be mangled in the hands of a native English speaker.
Like
We could take a boat
And steal away to the island
I could bring my music
There's more to life than this
But we'd have to be back quickly
The find the town's best baker
And take the first bread of the morning
there's more to life than this.
Which is really lame and leaves the audience wondering "Why do they have to get the bread?"
Words like nick and ghetto blaster really make that verse but it would be unusually for a native speaker to use them - even though a non-native speaker most likely has a smaller vocabulary, the lack of associations they have with English words might mean they have fewer inhibitions when they write, which produces much more interesting lyrics.
And like this
Quote:
I don't wanna talk
About things we've gone through
Though it's hurting me
Now it's history
I've played all my cards
And that's what you've done too
Nothing more to say
No more ace to play
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If a native-English speaker played this as an original at an open mic night, I don't think people could stop themselves from bursting out laughing at the like "No more ace to play" - partly because it's broken English, and partly because comparing love to cards is dodgy at the best of times.
Quote:
If we played even
I'd be your queen
But someone was cheatin'
And it wasn't me
I played on the table
You held something back
If love is aces, gimme the jack
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This verse is at face value, less comical, but it's also a lot less mature than the themes in the ABBA song. In that short stanza they communicate far more than "You wronged me, now I don't want to love anymore" like the McKee song (which I also love). They manage to convey the heartbreak of an adult relationship breaking down without real fault on either side, the time where you realise everything has played out and there's nothing left keeping you together.
Like,
Quote:
Nothing more to say
No more ace to play
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Is comical to English ears...but actually it's devastating. I tear up at that line, when I think about the breakups in my life. There was no more ace to play...like, that is so grown up and bleak and painful.
And yet a little Singlish too, like "Oh, sorry, cannot. Ace no have, lah. "
It's like, both. Magical.
I just wonder if the same thing happens in reverse, when like English speakers try to write in German or Hebrew or whatever.