Howard vs. Morrison (good vs. shitty, respectively)

This is something I've been talking about for years, but I think that this is an example I can especially articulate. In the following text, I am going to compare and contrast (sort of) Fly Me to The Moon, written by Bart Howard (as sung by Sinatra, and many others) and Moonlight Drive, written by Jim Morrison. I'd like to just get it out there now, that I think that Fly Me to the Moon is not only superior musically, but is also far more poetic.

I'm going to attempt to not rely simply on Morrison's pretension to make my point, but werd, the lyrics in Moonlight Drive are certainly the faux-poetic ramblings of a pretentious film student who's films would've been even less bearable than his lyrics. Fly Me to the Moon is much shorter, and portrays the exact same sentiment is far less words without losing any of the effect of the song meaning.

Both songs are essentially just love songs, both are based on metaphors. The difference, however, is in how the idea is presented in both songs. Morrison is basically saying he digs this chick, but because of his unbearable public persona (professional jackass) it is shrouded in plausible drug-related metaphors. His audience clearly wants to believe he is a poet (which he clearly is not) and thusly, even a silly love song like this can seem poetic if you try really hard. But the whole thing is a put-on. The dude never wrote anything poetic, or in any way substantial. Everything he wrote was the same shit, it was kind of a precursor to the nineties, in that all you had to do to seem poetic was to not make any fucking sense.

Fly me to the Moon is just good. It's simple, elegant, romantic, and classic. You completely understand and identify with the song immediately, and you know what you're getting into. There's no need to waste your time trying to come up with several different equally retarded concepts for what the song is about, when you could just be enjoying the song. The lyrics succeed in every possible way. They are structured perfectly, and they just sound good, which is obviously the point, since the lyrics in the song, at least at some point in the writing process, have to be considered as an instrument.

Lyrics as an instrument is an impossible concept if you fill them out with loads of bullshit to make them seem poetic, because no matter what you do they don't really fit as well as something simpler would. Simplicity is a concept Jim Morrison and the Doors didn't seem to understand very well, which is a shame in any art form. The best examples from every field rely on simplicity a good amount of the time, because you're talking about taking expression seriously, and if your point is to portray something you think or feel to an audience, it only makes sense that you say it in a way that fucking makes sense.

Simplicity in lyricism isn't even easier. For real. That's what I think is the biggest and most irritating misconception, Fly me to the Moon is a very short song, but is 100% successful in every way, because every word of it is perfect, whereas any Doors song could really stand to be shorter. If you can write something meaningful, substantial, poetic and relatable in a few stanzas, you could argue for your own poeticism, whereas any fucking moron who's high as shit can write down a bunch of words that seem like sentences and pretend it means something.

Fuck him, dawg.