I think there are way worse lyrics elsewhere on the album

yep

I don't think there are any bad lyrics on this album. They're all par for the course at this point for Ed -- some ocean references, some nature stuff, some cosmos stuff, some weary traveler stuff -- and then a handful of lines that are deeply compelling (some written by Jeff or Stone or maybe Matt).

Outside of a handful of older songs -- Present Tense, Amongst The Waves, Gone, a few others -- I just accept Ed's lyrics for what they are: Decent, but taken to some great heights when his vocal performance is on-point.

I find the lyrics very effective for this song.

Yeah, this. There's some clunkers, but there are definitely some bigger clunkers in the catalog.

I'm not talking about the themes or the sentiments. What I really bristle at with a lot of latter-day PJ songs is the construction of some lines. Ed just has a natural tendency towards verbosity and clunkiness of language, and this shows up all through the album, even in songs that are otherwise lyrically powerful. See, for example, "Sadness comes, with it a sea of tears, would some love be best had it not appeared"

That's been a staple of his writing almost from jump, accordingly. It leads to his best and worst work.

if I was going to be kind to that line, I would say it's an attempt to subvert the cliche "better to have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all"; but Ed is punching above his weight with Shakespeare

I guess I like the clunkiness. If the lyrics always flow together perfectly I find they may get a bit stale/boring/predictable for me.

I thought Brett Michaels wrote that

it’s an obscure Poison reference kind of day in the ol’ Stipelman household

haha I just looked it up, it's Tennyson

I'm continuing this conversation in the gigaton thread:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5107&start=19600

I think you could just as easily flip this and say that identifying with the message makes one more likely to conflate the content of the message with good writing. This happens with overtly topical music a lot, people stuggling to separate the quality of the work itself from the degree to which they agree or disagree with what it's saying.

I don't think it's deafness to the song's message that is causing me to think, for example, that "If you grow tired of the game/Hit the road towards the clouds/Find the groove in the sound" is an obvious, uncreative metaphor. The acid trip line just feels overly literal and inappropriate for the song. There may be worse lyrics elsewhere on the album, but for whatever reason these are the ones that have jumped out at me. And I still enjoy the song despite them.

I think PJ (and rock music in general) has a ceiling when it comes to lyrical creativity and originality; I go to them for emotional resonance

if the lyrics here don't grab you, I totally understand, but this song resonates with me emotionally and that's all I need from it; I don't think there's a single decent Pearl Jam song that doesn't make use of cliches

Probably, but this song isn't even sort of hitting it.

Again, no disrespect if you dig the lyrics or identify with them. We all react differently to songs for different reasons, this is just one of the things that holds this song back for me. And, again, I do still enjoy it.

maybe, I just don't care much

I also don't care if the song is "topical" (whether or not it speaks to social distancing is not why I need it right now)

at least it isn't "I used to be crustacean in an underwater nation"

in my opinion, it's not cliche that's the problem, it's more the mixture of abstract and concrete imagery; but there isn't a single PJ song without that issue ("three crooked hearts, swirls all around")

this is how I feel

Man, I love that tune.