(I choose to narrow my focus because the genres of country, hip-hop, R&B and pop contain their own unique - and, on the whole, less apparent - problems in this regard, and warrant separate consideration).ДЄnd it's said it's the most important partДЄnd I gave it all away just so I could say that Let's take a look at some lyrics by four popular mainstream indie artists. Albums instead seem to be judged on a criterion of attitude, atmosphere and that nebulous catchall imprecisely referred to as 'production.' This sort of negligence not only allows artists like the Black Keys to get away with writing lyrics that would make an ESL teacher wince, but also threatens to shortchange the few remaining songwriters who exhibit a genuine talent for lyrical verse by asking them not to try so hard, lest the swine trample - or, perhaps worse, ignore - their hard-won pearls. Indeed, a person taking a survey of several leading print and online publications might be forgiven for concluding that a song's words are no longer a measure of its failures or successes, but an arbitrary component unworthy of serious discussion. Today's almost complete lack of critical interface with lyrical content provides no such distinctions. But in studying previous decades of pop and rock music journalism, I have noticed in pans and raves alike a strict attention paid to the words being sung lyrics are largely the reason Kurt Cobain was hailed as the voice of his generation, and why Scott Weiland is still widley considered a buffoon. I can attest with authority that America, New Order and The Cranberries have all committed crimes against the English language that Win Butler, short of suffering some grade of concussion, could never hope to perpetrate. To preempt accusations of priggishness, I wish to emphasize that I am in no way arguing that lyrics have somehow 'gotten worse.' I was born in the '70s, grew up in the '80s, and spent the '90s investing every spare dime in a CD collection that now requires its own storage facility.

When music criticism promotes an environment of immunity for the insipid, the unimaginative and the superficial, do artists, perhaps subconsciously, take note?ДЄny critical voice that ignores lyrics like these is guilty of condoning - even endorsing - vapid nonsense. While it is true that 2013 will go down as the year in which my disgust for the unchecked inanities in the lyrics of mainstream indie music reached something of a peak, possibly explaining why I felt some kinship with Krystal, it is not poetry missing from the lyrics of today's music, but a sense of accountability on the part of artists and critics alike. As a music fan and critic, my initial response to the article was sympathy: I have often contemplated the reverse, bemoaning the missing poetry in today's music. In October, The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article by Arthur Krystal titled 'The Missing Music In Today's Poetry.' In it, Krystal argues that contemporary verse, with its abandonment of traditional meter and what Krystal calls 'rhythmic design,' has become atonal, unmoving and unmemorable. Because the music that they constantly play,

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