The devotees of much current popular music want and respond to lyrics rich with social criticism.
His method was to listen to the most banal music he could find, something he knew so well that he didn't respond to the lyrics or the melody, and play it over and over.
To your violence I prefer responding with my lyrics.
Michael Ball's anti-hero starts with the huge advantage of responding to Sondheim lyrics, which tell us: "Inconspicious Sweeney was, Quick and quiet and clean 'e was".
The cryptic lyrics, responding to the suicide of a friend, are filled with medical jargon, and the music hurtles ahead, suddenly downshifts into quiet mourning, then reverses itself or dives into abstract noise.
(They mocked the singer's oversensitivity; West, not a man known for his self-awareness, responded by penning lyrics about how much South Park hurt his feelings. "You just want to say, 'Dude, look at yourself. Look at yourself,'" Stone says with an eye-roll).
Lee Hall, who wrote the original screenplay and the stage musical's lyrics, responds: The whole point of Billy Elliot is that working-class culture can produce and support the finest achievements in art, and the greatest obstacle is the narrow-minded bigotry of those who assume this is not possible.
Below, invite your students to invent their own fake science conferences; write lyrics that respond to a much-discussed new song; create new words to describe inventions the world still needs; and find "multiple perspectives" in any Times article.
Confederate troops were heard playing the tune, perhaps with alternate lyrics, and responded with unexpected emotion to Northern renditions of it during quiet moments in camp.
As UltraViolet's campaign gained momentum, other feminist bloggers and commentators weighed in, among them Rosa Clemente, an activist whose YouTube video responding to Mr. Ross's lyrics was viewed almost 17,000 times.
Hill responded by reimagining the lyrics from the Spice Girls' 1996 hit "Wannabe".
