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Basic Trope: The lyrics in a song are impossible to understand.

  • Straight: The lyrics of the song "Troperia" are very difficult to understand.
  • Exaggerated: The entire soundtrack has nonsense lyrics.
  • Downplayed: Word Salad Lyrics
  • Justified:
    • The singers are so drunk at the time of recording that their speech is slurred.
    • The singers sang competently,but their recording equipment had issues that could not be fixed in post.
    • The singer made the lyrics up on the fly.
  • Inverted:
    • The lyrics are sung in perfect, clear pronunciation.
    • The lyrics are performed competently, but the drums are out of sync and each instrument is playing in a different key, making the instrumentals an incoherent mess.
  • Subverted:
    • The lyrics turn out to be written in a foreign language.
    • The lyrics were recorded backward.
    • The lyrics consist entirely of made-up words.
  • Double Subverted:
    • ...which is still incomprehensible in that foreign language...
    • ...and the lyrics still don't string together.
    • The made-up words mean nothing.
  • Parodied: Those are the actual lyrics. "Troperia"'s section in the lyrics booklet just says: "Who the hell knows what we said?"
  • Zig-Zagged: Only some part of the lyrics are unintelligible.
  • Averted:
    • The lyric is intelligible.
    • The song is an instrumental, and has no lyrics.
  • Enforced:
    • Concealing lyrics or their meaning to evade censorship.
    • The band is a Black Metal band.
    • The song wasn't in their native language.
  • Lampshaded: The band releases a statement saying that it doesn't matter what the song's about since nobody will be able to understand any of it anyway.
  • Invoked: The band deliberately had it edited to be indistinct as they felt it blended better.
  • Exploited: In an early video game, the soundcard is incapable of reproducing clear speech so instead of going without or using instrumental they use genres that have it as the norm.
  • Defied: The producers and/or engineers don't let the band into the studio when they come in to record "Troperia" intoxicated.
  • Discussed: Part of the lyrics include "if I could hear myself a minute ago, I would ask: 'what?'"
  • Conversed: "Hold on, what did he just sing? Lady Mondegreen? Ladle pondering?" "Yeah, that's weird. At least it's followed by a sick guitar solo."
  • Deconstructed: The listeners get frustrated over the attempt to make out the lyrics and stop buying the song "Troperia."
  • Reconstructed: The listeners start to enjoy trying to comprehend the lyrics.
  • Plotted a Good Waste: "Troperia" is the ending track of a concept album depicting a man's slow downward spiral into insanity, and the lyrics get harder and harder to parse as the man's condition worsens.
  • Played for Horror: The song is about supernatural beings, and it is implied that some lyrics are indecipherable because You Cannot Grasp the True Form of said beings.

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