I have ZZ Top's immortal classic, "Sharp Dressed Man," stuck indelibly in my head this morning. I'm drumming my fingers on the desk and everything. The inside of my head reverberates with the main guitar riff:

Doo doo-doo, doo-doo doo
(doo doo-doo-doo)!

It is then accompanied by the voice of whoever the singer for ZZ Top is, inexplicably skipping over the entire verse and right to the punchline:

something something
something something
'cause every girl's crazy
bout a sharp-dressed man!
(doo doo-doo-doo!)

I don't like ZZ Top, nor am I particularly fond of this song.

I think music has suffered in the last five or six years from the fact that songwriters who aren't well-recognized ("underground" music, if you must) aren't willing to write earnest lyrics any more. They feel the need to be clever, or wacky, or kitschy - Jesus, anything but heartfelt and genuinely thoughtful.

Now, my perspective on this is probably somewhat skewed, as the music I listen to is earnest to the point of melodrama, so earnest that it hurts, positively hurts. These are the people who can sing "We'll cruise the starways/and walk in castles of gold, our love turns into a crystalline dream" and absolutely mean every word of it.

Regardless, it seems like a lot of musicians nowadays are scared to be earnest. I'm guilty of this myself (to whatever small extent I can consider myself a musician) - the last few songs I've worked on have been, at least lyrically, aimed towards humor value. It doesn't help that when I go back and listen to the earnest music I wrote in high school, I positively cringe, because, well, high schoolers being earnest tends to make one cringe.

Ironically, it's pop music that seems to take itself most seriously now, although there's the occasional strain of snarky postmodernism there too.

The song I've been working on recently is an instrumental, and while it still takes itself too seriously, people don't make fun of you as much when you take yourself too seriously musically instead of lyrically. They just don't listen to it.