United States

Lyrics, Smearyics!!! I've recorded completely instrumental works of art with incredible guitarists and drummers that blaze thru melodies with sensual undertones and speak arrangements with strings in 5 different languages. Our instruments are our voices! Speak Load!!

Smooth when you take away the lyrics you narrow your target audience, theres nothing wrong with that if that is waht you want. But very few Instrumentals break thru to the mainstream, In the last 20 yrs Satch had that song Summer Song and Eric Johnson had Cliffs Of Dover. Im sure there are more but they are few and far between.

That being said as a guitarist I love instrumental fusion type music, but you arent going to hear it on the radio.

Music must have a message. But it can be nonverbal.

Does that make sense?

no I cant really enjoy a song with only one or the other. I consider a song "an expression of a state of bieng" or a state of mind. my goal is to express the intent of the song and i feel it requires both to create real art. you can of course write cathcy riff's and jingle's, but if you were stuck in a bunker for 2 years and had music to listen to, would you want it to trigger a particular state of bieng in you, or make you want to make a silly face and run out to buy something?
Hayden King

Frankenstien? The Satchmans "Surfing with an Alien"?

I dont know after thinking some more I think a song has to look,taste, and feel like SEX. After all sex sells

sigh..... back to the drawing board...

I think it depends what kind of song it is really. I mean, for stuff like folk songs lyrics always come before the music, but if you rock out to metal than really the lyrics are borderline irrelevant since sometimes they are inaudable.