I’m rubbish with lyrics. In my band, I don’t think I’ve ever written a single lyric – I don’t view music as some sort of poetic outlet and I’ve rarely written a piece of music that expresses some innermost feeling. I don’t say this as a dig at other musicians, rather I don’t share the same gift they have. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t spot a bad lyric every now and then.

In the bath this evening with Last.fm playing I was treated some Delain. Delain are a female-fronted Dutch symphonic metal band. Now I don’t want to be too harsh as English isn’t their first language but the lyrics to one of their songs made me cringe. In the song ‘See Me In Shadow’ the start of each verse followed this same formula:

Verb + (interjection of ‘on the’ ‘in the’ or ‘by the’) + Random Noun + (another interjection of ‘of your’) + Human emotion/expression

Let me make this easier to understand. Here are some examples of opening lines from each of their verses:

• Standing in the shadow of your lies
• Standing by the ruins of your soul
• Standing by the paintings of your dreams

For some reason I found this really annoying. These type of lyrics don’t mean anything to me and they might as well have written lines like ‘Sitting on the toilet of your desires’ or ‘Wading through the condensation of your stench’.

Meh. That is all.