Word: lyrical
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...flunked physical. He and his father used to fight about his chosen occupation--J.D. wanted him to be a naval officer. "By the time he was diagnosed," he says, "we'd made our peace." In 1996 he wrote one of his finest songs, False Echoes, about J.D., a sober lyric without fancy wordplay about a man who "fades like a flare...
Robert Schumann's irrefutable greatness rests on the expressive richness of his piano music and the beauty of his lyric songs. However, his stature as a symphonist has remained unsettled since his death in 1856. For some he is the link between Schubert's lyricism and Brahms' grandeur. But The New Grove Dictionary dismisses his symphonies as "inflated piano music with mainly routine orchestration." Because of their melodic fecundity and power, they remain widely performed and recorded. Still, conductors from Gustav Mahler to George Szell have edited their working scores, attempting to compensate for Schumann's putative deficiencies: amateurish orchestration...
...there is a lyric in the film that gives the lie to the bravado of the entire girl-power movement. "Look at me," Mulan sings, "I will never pass for/ a perfect bride/ or a perfect daughter/ Can it be/ I'm not meant to play this part?" In the end, however, she substitutes one part for another. And that's one of the limitations of girl power. Its lure is the image of girls kicking ass, being boylike. But how well does it prepare them to be adults in a complex world? "We're struggling to find alternative models...
...four songs, by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel, propel the plot with lyric efficiency. But then, at the end, the racy Eddie Murphy spirit that has been held in check during the film explodes with a Motownish rave-up, True to Your Heart, that cascades over the closing credits. The song doesn't have much to do with the girl-power theme of this briskly enchanting film, but it's a perky parting gift from the Disney folks. The R.-and-B. group 98[degrees] and Stevie Wonder trade harmonic and harmonica riffs with some sassy horns, and euphoria saturates...
...anyone avoid Viagra and virility? Or public discussions of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and herpes? Young girls have lip-synched often enough to Alanis Morissette's big hit of a couple of years ago, You Oughta Know, to have found the sex nestled in the lyric. But it's more than just movies and television and news. Adolescent curiosity about sex is fed by a pandemic openness about it--in the schoolyard, on the bus, at home when no adult is watching. Just eavesdrop at the mall one afternoon, and you'll hear enough pubescent sexcapades...