Strange Ideas Behind British Songwriter's Absurdist Lyrics

Posted on November 11, 2006

The National Post reports that the ideas behind British songwriter Robyn Hitchcock's songs are even stranger than the actual songs.

For instance, mention The Yip Song, which opens his 1993 album Respect, and he'll tell you: "I imagine an old World War Two veteran dying on morphine, and having hallucinations, one of which is a bunch of little black Scottie dogs going 'Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!' Another one is his pin-up [when he was] a young man, Vera Lynn, and he's mixing them all up, and as he's dying he's also imagining that he's in a plane crashing. Or maybe he's actually in a plane crashing back then, and he's imagining he might live into the future and be on morphine."

Right. Clearly the man has a lot more on his mind than sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. And no matter what he writes about, the melodies, drawing on The Byrds and The Beatles, are always memorable. This irresistible combination has garnered Hitchcock a coterie of famous fans in his 30-year career, which started when he sang for Cambridge, England's psychedelic upstart, The Soft Boys. Many of his musical admirers have become collaborators, from Toronto's The Sadies to Michael Stipe.

The Post article says Hitchcock sees his idea of "marrying creatively absurdist lyrics to catchy tunes" is a tradition that includes Syd Barrett, Bob Dylan and even nursery rhymes. Hitchcock also offers a little advice -- he says every successful song of his has an emotional core.

"You've gotta have the feeling there, or combination of feelings. Sometimes it's like one of those menus where you can have a sushi-sashimi combo. You can have rice, lobster, dumplings and guacamole. Sometimes things won't blend together, and sometimes they will."

Hitchcock also writes a little poetry and you can see some of it on his website at robynhitchcock.com.

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