something about the rock vocal tracks . . .

[ChillyChao]

when i was at the ripe old age of 12 years old , i was very hyperfixated on sonic the hedgehog . i did not join this forum for no reason . ( please dont ban me i am turning 17 years old next month )
at the little miniscule age of 12 , i wasnt as into music as i was now . just the classic mix of video game osts , pop music , and sometimes old nastolgic hip hop songs i used to listen to . but now that im older , i can say pretty confidently that music has been extremely important to me for a good while . for about 13 years of my life , my favorite genre was pop . when i was 14 , it was rap. but once i turned 15 and started obsessing over my chemical romance , it became rock . as such , this post will be mainly covering newer gen rock . so none of the beatles , def leopard , lynard skynard , or anything like that . im talking aout newer and harsher rock .

when i was younger, i thought the rock tracks in sonic games were really cool and edgy . having no exposure to actual rock ( my mom bought me this shirt that said purrvana with a cat swimming after a dollar and i had no clue what the context was lol ) i thought these tracks were really frickin' hardcore , especially the ones from shadow the hedgehog . i am all of me had to have been the hardest rock song i've heard at that time , and of course i loved it because of that .

but now looking back i realize that not only are these extremely soft and tame rock songs, but the lyrics in them feel like they lack the care that a normal rock song would have . the lyrics are either laid straight out there for you or just feel ... extemely disjointed . to show you what i mean, here's a line from i never told you what i do for a living (my personal favorite my chemical romance song btw) and a line from live and learn .

"Only go so far 'til you bury them
So deep and down we go"

this line connects really well . there's a subtle allegory here with "'til you bury them" and "so deep and down we go" , the lines are pretty apparently linked metaphorically, and they fit into the song's theme of murder and death really well. these lyrics help to convey a theme in the song.

"Can you feel life tangle you up inside (yeah!)
And now your face down on the floor, oh"

these lines barely connect to me . sure , if you get tangled up and something you would slip . but the line just seems so awkward other than that . this could be replaced with any other line and the song could flow exactly the same . it barely fits whatever theme the song attempts to have , and it just feels out of place .

along with this, these songs lack a coherent theme or plot most of the time. it just feels like a random jumble of words and a very vague theme most of the time. lets compare the themes of some popular rock songs to some sonic rock songs to see what i mean here.

you're crashing, but you're no wave by fall out boy follows a court case. the song was based on a real case, and even opens with the following lyrics:
"The D.A. is dressed to the nines
In the mirror he practices all his lines
To his closing argument, twelve hearts beat in favor
I'm guessing that he read the morning paper…"

mama by my chemical romance follows a soldier sending letters to his mother. i'm not 100% sure if this was confirmed, but its both a popular and likely meaning if not, as can be referred by these lyrics (which i have had to censor due to cursing ):
"And if you would call me a sweetheart
I'd maybe then sing you a song
But the stuff that I've done with this hell of a gun
You would cry out your eyes all night"
"We all carry on
When our brothers in arms are gone
So raise your glass high for tomorrow we die
And return from the ashes you call"

now, open your heart admittedly does have a theme, the best way i can describe it is that classic 4kids shtick of "dont ever give up and follow your heart" . any of the lyrics could give you that clue , and i'm sure everyone here has heard open your heart at least once , but for the sake od being fair i'll still provide lyrics to support this:
"If it won't stop
There will be no future for us
Its heart's tied down by
All the hate, gotta set it free!"
"All the steps we take, all the moves we make
All the pain at stake
I see the chaos for everyone
Who are we? What can we do?
You and I are same in the way that
We have our own styles that we won't change
Yours is filled with evil and mine's not
There is no way I can lose"

most of the themes in sonic songs are either simple or just non existent. now , don't get me wrong . these are theme songs for children's games , i don't expect persona 5 level storytelling from them , but a lot of them don't even really fit the game they come from ? for example , live and learn just sounds really edgy to me , it has no correlation to the game nor the scene it is played in . songs with no themes can and have been done right , just look at smells like teen spirit . but even though a lot of crush 40's music for these games is genuinely really good , they just feel plain.

this is definitely just me being nitpicky , i do actually find the sonic rock osts super cool. i just wish more was done with them instead of being themeless , quiet , slow songs . when i think rock i think of heavy music used to tell stories , and maybe im asking too much of this children's game , but the songs just did not do that for me .

[chaoadventures]

I highly disagree. Some of the vocal tracks in Sonic are excellently nuanced. Quality and depth has nothing to do with being ""kids material"' and all with ambition and style, and that's a statement not as "a Sonic fan" but as someone who just reads deeper into a lot of fiction frequently. I do not have a particularly high attachment to "normal" music myself, as it typically disappoints me wholesale. I just like music from other material and have a deep appreciation for it as another way to layer on a game's themes and experiences in incredibly complex and clever ways.

Most recently for Sonic, Frontiers came out with what I believe is 7 different vocal songs that are all amazing and some of them even illustrate the struggle of the characters and plot of Frontiers better than the writing itself.

My personal favorite from the game, "Break Through It All", has the lines:

"No more compromise, This is do or die,
Now you've crossed the line, You'll wake the beast inside.
No more compromise, This is do or die,
I'll warn you one last time, You'll wake the beast inside"

This isn't just a sick part that flows well! It's an embodiment of the game's core event, (obv actual spoiler ->)a literal trapped eldritch beast, though not in this boss specifically. but the word "wake" here refers to the means in which it was sealed. It was quite an ordeal. as well as the blunt thoughts of the character Sage. But it's not just that either! It's a reference to the song that plays earlier in the game, "Undefeatable", with the line "Now you've crossed the line" using that to aid it in representing the fight of Sonic facing an uncertain enemy despite a previous victory; there's a hint of "Can he do it again?" and that's conveyed in so little and just a bit of repetition- that's just the surface of the song. I could probably even dissect this further!

But that's recent! Definitely past whatever point you left Sonic to "be in the house like carpet". /j Let's go back a bit to 2009 and instead look at my favorite Sonic song of all time: "With Me"

To single out another favorite part of favorite song:

"I can taste the day (taste the day), Savor night (savor night),
Spells beyond you, As I watch you crawl,
Do you dare to fight (dare to fight), Evil's might (evil's might),
I'll be the last one standing, In a flash of light,"

People often praise Black Knight for its plot, rather than its gameplay, and stuff like this is a lot of why!

The core argument of Black Knight's story is that the world and other things are not permanent fixtures.
This song does not just represent that statement, but both sides of the argument on whether or not one should halt everything due to this or not! It's the final fight itself, distilled to its core, conveyed with the raw energy of music.

These lines outlined here argue that both Sonic and the game's main villain are a form of evil, and (to simplify and not turn this into a full dissection of With Me that goes on too long) it is
a battle between two entities that are both equally appreciative of the now, but in different ways.

You could argue these are all a bit reliant on the rest of the game for their weight, but I personally believe the difference between a thematically heavy "normal" song and a "game" song is full integration with the game's other elements. Video games are just that: video games. They're not just music for listening, they go together with music to create a whole experience. There's a reason people advocate for games as an art form.

You could also argue that, as none of these are Crush 40 tracks, therefore, Sonic's renowned band fails to hit the mark here. And I would personally agree, they don't say much that hasn't been said by the game itself. But I don't think everything has to be rocket science myself: there's a certain je ne sais quoi of simple but fitting backing tracks. It's only one band even, with their own style and their own approach.

But in spite of this, regardless of how you feel on the matter, Sonic has tracked a considerably large number of Songs by bands and artists outside of them from even before Crush 40 was formed (it's not particularly heavy itself, but I'm a big fan of Lookalike): There's so many songs that go deeper! Just look at the Shadow the Hedgehog ending themes, like Waking Up.

Sonic's vocal tracks are not always "premium" thematics lyrically, and some of them even simply have no relation to, as far as I can tell, anything in the game (ex. Diamond in The Sky) but if you ask me some of them are undeniably well put together and further their narratives to great heights.

I didn't have a good spot to add on this, so:

"Can you feel life tangle you up inside (yeah!)
And now your face down on the floor, oh"

these lines barely connect to me . sure , if you get tangled up and something you would slip . but the line just seems so awkward other than that . this could be replaced with any other line and the song could flow exactly the same . it barely fits whatever theme the song attempts to have , and it just feels out of place .

The song is literally called "Live and Learn", if you were to have something in life "tangle you up", you would learn from that experience, no? It's quite literally a song about living, making mistakes, and learning from them: Quite like the game's core theme of breaking a perpetuation of destruction and revenge by learning from your actions and others. I fail to see how this doesn't fit the song or game.

Crush 40 songs are typically simple, but they always know what they're on about and quite coherent. The worst crime of Live and Learn is honestly that it fails to highlight the differences in Adventure 2's approach to the matter vs Adventure 1's. Of which I personally think are quite significant when broken down!

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this was topic posted real close to april 1st. is it bait? musings expecting no answer? look i just wanted to post 3000 words again

[ChillyChao]

hihi thank you for your response, this is just my opinion on this as someone who's a big fan of rock music so i'm really happy to see someone add their own 2 cents to the conversation !

to answer this question though :

this was topic posted real close to april 1st. is it bait? musings expecting no answer? look i just wanted to post 3000 words again

it isn't bait, a thought just popped into my head at like 2 am and i wanted to write it down lol . more of a musing expecting no answer, as you put it. i admit i haven't listened to any newer sonic songs (other than green light ride), nor have i listened to too many tracks in the franchise. i'm just a big fan of rock music and wanted to point out what i saw at the time of posting