Bad Lyrics on Peace

[JugeSTP]

Since we're bashing the Peace album hardcore in that other thread... I figured I'd document what pisses me off so much about this album:


1. Between the Lines - This is one of the few songs I'm cool with. Though rhyming drugs with drugs? Not egregious, but kinda lame.


2. TALO - Fine except for the swine flu thing. Weird.


3. Huckleberry - Lady Jaberwoke. Seriously? Also the "right on right on" stuff - ugh.


4. Hickory Dichotomy - ruined the song from the very beginning by drowning out cool music with "alright alright alright come on". ugh.


5. Dare if you Dare - MORE SWING FLU SHIT?!?! STOP IT!


6. Cinnamon - horrible from top to bottom, but the chorus stands out as the worst stp material of all time.


7. Hazy Daze - you know what, not much bad to say about the lyrical content here.


8. Bagman - Dead on arrival like Hickory. The honey/sugar thing is just awful. Embarrassment to the catalog.


9. Peacoat - lyrics are fine


10. Fast as I can - the whole lyrical value is poor, but "buy fancy yogurt"? Really?


11. FKOM - "Super magic robots". Ugh.


12. Maver - I really like the lyrics on Maver but "macho pendejos"?.


Seriously, someone couldn't overwrite him on some of this stuff?

[DankoJones]

Ok now do it for every other album

I get you don't like the album but you can find weird lyrics in almost every song Scott has done

[CritterTypeThing]

Hahah let's all try to channel the negativity into a small defined area.  There's many more reasons to be positive these days.  That said....

With the peace album I think there's some solid music, and some really good melodies, but yea it does have some of the weaker lyrical spots in the overall catalogue.  As opposed to lyrical choices, I'm bothered a bit more with the vocal composition.  I think Scott tries to shoe-horn words into spots that don't fit in some songs, instead of letting the music breathe a bit more.  But moreso he started doing this thing of stretching out words in some songs that comes across as whining a bit (See BTL, Hickory, Fast).  Most of the songs still win me over though, despite those few criticisms. 

The overall problem I've always had was that it just doesn't flow as well.  The songs seem to be more of a collection of single songs they just strung together.  But that's also viewing it as the followup to SLDD where they wrote/recorded all the songs together in the same period.

Bagman does come across as a lazy song in all regards, not just Scott's choice of lyrics.

[loungefly90]

Unfortunately, I'm not going to take the time to go through each song, but am glad there is now a clearly defined post to officially rag on this terrible album because it truly deserves it.

Is it the melodies? The lyrics? The music? The relationship the band had with one another at the time? It's all of them! Nothing on this album works. Nothing.

Even those who casually listen to the album and do the, "There's some good stuff there" I feel like are truly missing the point. This is not just some random band who released another album. This isn't Three Days Grace or Nickelback. It's STP and I have a hard time stomaching their mediocrity as their work prior to this has not deserved much criticism. Saying, "There's SOME good stuff here" is not a compliment. And for those who think Peace, High Rise, or both are good albums, please explain why the band has completely ignored these efforts (so far) since Jeff has joined the group? It's very obvious that the band wants to forget those two pieces and wants to move on from them both.

Everything about the album told me that I was just expected to swallow poor music and melodies simply because it was STP. For me, even the cover seems lazy. A self-titled album with a giant peace sign? And why is the Shangri leaf on the hand? I certainly see how people could compare the lazy artwork to Butterfly, but that was an actual drawn design where Peace is just a hand gesture. I have a hand gesture I'd like to give this album myself...

The good about the album: The actual book inside is pretty awesome. Not sure if anyone has taken the time to flip through the pages, but I love the artwork inside as well as making the members look somewhat animated. There's some creativity here for sure, something about the book that I hadn't seen before for sure. Also, this was released in multiple formats, which came unexpected from the band that wants to constantly do things that never come to fruition. As much as I dislike the album, I own 3 different versions of it.

My biggest issue now and always has been the music. How is this the same band that wrote Atlanta? How? The 3 minute songs and mashed together music just creates a large mess and melodically Scott literally had nowhere to go. Every song sounds fast, ends quickly, and seems to really never get started. A mess of loud noises shows me everyone was in a different place. It sounds like 4 solo albums mixed together. I really feel like the band had about an hour to write and record a bunch of songs and this is what we got. The band didn't want to do it, Scott didn't want to do it, and I ignore Peace as an effort in their catalog as I would prefer to reminisce about the days of SLDD when the band was in a terrific place relationship-wise and wanted to create a double album. I am seeing and hearing exactly the opposite here.


Also, I don't have a problem at all with any of Scott's "weird" lyrics. I love/loved Scott's odd and unpredictable character. But, there is a difference between lazy and weird. Most of the lyrics coming from the singer on this album just do not feel the same.

[loungefly611]

5. Dare if you Dare - MORE SWING FLU SHIT?!?! STOP IT!

It's swine flu actually. I remember that was kind of a big deal around that time. I pulled up these lyrics from the same song:

It's hard to make amends
When you're sitting there on the fence
Let the proof be in the pudding, sugar
Everybody wants to start a new religion
Please relax don't need a soul collision
There's a dusty rose where the promise of love used to be


That last line is pretty powerful IMO. Like Danko said, you could go through any of Scott's lyrics and find some headscratchers.

While I wasn't initially keen on Cinnamon, it grew on me immensely and is probably my favorite track off the Peace record. Certainly, 'Yeah, come on come on now yeah' isn't a poetic milestone, but 'I told you five or four times' isn't either.

[Sklashboombash]

Ok now do it for every other album


I get you don't like the album but you can find weird lyrics in almost every song Scott has done

Danko is 100% right on the money.


With all due respect to everyone’s opinion, ripping a song for a word here and there is just ridiculous.


If you know anything about Scott’s lyrics, (as I’m sure most of us do on here) they have always either been painstaking life-experience or heavy on the use of imagery with words. His influence of Morrison, Lennon & Bowie is exactly this. 


Not everything is black and white or cut and dry in art. And make no mistake, Scott was an artist.


There are other factors surrounding this album that contribute to the hate it gets. We know the stories of how it was created, what state the band was in, the absence of Brendan… I firmly believe that if some of these songs came in the “hey-day”, they’d get more of a pass.

[JugeSTP]

5. Dare if you Dare - MORE SWING FLU SHIT?!?! STOP IT!

It's swine flu actually. I remember that was kind of a big deal around that time. I pulled up these lyrics from the same song:

It's hard to make amends
When you're sitting there on the fence
Let the proof be in the pudding, sugar
Everybody wants to start a new religion
Please relax don't need a soul collision
There's a dusty rose where the promise of love used to be


That last line is pretty powerful IMO. Like Danko said, you could go through any of Scott's lyrics and find some headscratchers.

While I wasn't initially keen on Cinnamon, it grew on me immensely and is probably my favorite track off the Peace record. Certainly, 'Yeah, come on come on now yeah' isn't a poetic milestone, but 'I told you five or four times' isn't either.

I know it's swine flu - just a typo. And yes, I knew it was a topical issue around that time. Still, signing about swine flu is just dumb. And he did it repetitively.

As far as Art School Girl, you literally just defended the dumbest chorus lyrically in the band's entire catalog by pointing our their second dumbest chorus lyrics in the entire catalog.

Haha. This is the point where I feel like I need to say that while I'm coming across harsh this is mostly me venting, it's all good, and I still love STP and all of you. It's my favorite band. Some of this is a little tongue in cheek. Though the Swine Flu references definitely are not rock n' roll.

[JugeSTP]

Ok now do it for every other album


I get you don't like the album but you can find weird lyrics in almost every song Scott has done

Danko is 100% right on the money.


With all due respect to everyone’s opinion, ripping a song for a word here and there is just ridiculous.


If you know anything about Scott’s lyrics, (as I’m sure most of us do on here) they have always either been painstaking life-experience or heavy on the use of imagery with words. His influence of Morrison, Lennon & Bowie is exactly this. 


Not everything is black and white or cut and dry in art. And make no mistake, Scott was an artist.


There are other factors surrounding this album that contribute to the hate it gets. We know the stories of how it was created, what state the band was in, the absence of Brendan… I firmly believe that if some of these songs came in the “hey-day”, they’d get more of a pass.

Totally fair. Again, just my personal opinion. BUT, I felt the random thoughts/words/phrases that Scott put out there on Peace were so much worse than any other album he did, ever. Including Blaster and Art of Anarchy.

[Sklashboombash]

"It's hard to make amends
When you're sitting there on the fence
Let the proof be in the pudding, sugar
Everybody wants to start a new religion
Please relax don't need a soul collision
There's a dusty rose where the promise of love used to be"

That last line is pretty powerful...

That's one of Scott's best lines ever, in my opinion - the type of lyric I wish I'd written.

[CritterTypeThing]

Unfortunately, I'm not going to take the time to go through each song, but am glad there is now a clearly defined post to officially rag on this terrible album because it truly deserves it.

Is it the melodies? The lyrics? The music? The relationship the band had with one another at the time? It's all of them! Nothing on this album works. Nothing.

You're not wrong here.  As STP music, I agree that a lot of it obviously falls short of the bar they previously set.  Riding a wave of Tiny Music into No 4 into SLDD, it's certainly a wipeout.

When thinking of it in the sense of holding up against some of the legendary music that came before, it's hard to argue anything you've pointed out.  But isolated on its own, I still appreciate pieces of it.

And right again there's so many factors that worked against the album.  It certainly starts with the relationship of the once beautiful 4 piece group coming off 8 years of not working together and not truly repairing those relationships to move forward creatively in the reunion.  If that foundation is shaky to begin with, any other factor is gonna weigh even heavier.


For the sake of conversation.  Is it possible that had songs like BTL, Load, Huckleberry, Hazy, FKOM, or Maver been released separately over time, could they have been better received in the STP catalogue?  Opposed to being put out together in a non-cohesive "reunion" album.

[JugeSTP]

I agree there were little nuggets and moments of good Scott on this album. Between the Lines and Maver are great songs thanks in large part to what he did with them. And yes, the lyrics about the dusty rose was super cool.

[Sklashboombash]

Not to shift album topics, but lyrically related...how do you feel about his lyrics on Blaster and/or Art of Anarchy?

[loungefly90]

Unfortunately, I'm not going to take the time to go through each song, but am glad there is now a clearly defined post to officially rag on this terrible album because it truly deserves it.

Is it the melodies? The lyrics? The music? The relationship the band had with one another at the time? It's all of them! Nothing on this album works. Nothing.

You're not wrong here.  As STP music, I agree that a lot of it obviously falls short of the bar they previously set.  Riding a wave of Tiny Music into No 4 into SLDD, it's certainly a wipeout.

When thinking of it in the sense of holding up against some of the legendary music that came before, it's hard to argue anything you've pointed out.  But isolated on its own, I still appreciate pieces of it.

And right again there's so many factors that worked against the album.  It certainly starts with the relationship of the once beautiful 4 piece group coming off 8 years of not working together and not truly repairing those relationships to move forward creatively in the reunion.  If that foundation is shaky to begin with, any other factor is gonna weigh even heavier.


For the sake of conversation.  Is it possible that had songs like BTL, Load, Huckleberry, Hazy, FKOM, or Maver been released separately over time, could they have been better received in the STP catalogue?  Opposed to being put out together in a non-cohesive "reunion" album.

My short answer is yes, absolutely. However, I'm really unsure where we really would have placed those songs? I mean, I literally look at your question as cutting them from the Peace album and sprinkling them among other albums. The almost good part about the Peace album is that most/all of STP's worst material is right there on one crappy album. I'm really glad Between The Lines isn't on Purple and am glad Maver doesn't show up on SLDD. While your idea is good, it relies too much on other good songs to elevate these terrible ones just by simply standing next to them. In my book, Between The Lines standing next to Atlanta doesn't make Between the Lines any better.

People often talk about STP albums as whole rather than focusing on individual songs, which is why I did a track by track review of Butterfly. I truly believe SLDD is their best work as I cannot find a bad song there, and while others disagree with that statement, I can find songs on other albums I do not love (Unglued, MC5, Ride the Cliche). I would vote Core as my favorite album, but the lack of beautiful ballads is the reason to make it number two for me. My point is that taking even the most successful songs from Peace and placing them on Tiny Music for example, would really hurt Tiny Music for me. Again, I'm really glad all of the crappy songs and tucked away in one place and are mostly segregated from the rest of their work. 

[JugeSTP]

Not to shift album topics, but lyrically related...how do you feel about his lyrics on Blaster and/or Art of Anarchy?

You know Blaster and Art of Anarchy bother me less than Peace honestly.

the one exception is Beach Pop which is just fucking awful. Superstar on AoA is pretty bad. But I just don't feel like either of those efforts are as lazy or mailed in as Cinnamon / Bagman especially.

[loungefly611]

For the sake of conversation.  Is it possible that had songs like BTL, Load, Huckleberry, Hazy, FKOM, or Maver been released separately over time, could they have been better received in the STP catalogue?  Opposed to being put out together in a non-cohesive "reunion" album.

I don't think so. From Core through SLDD, that was a moment in time (Both good and bad) that cannot be replicated. I don't think you can't take songs from a new era and try to place them in the first era. Different time and space.