Basic Trope: What a song is about does not match how it sounds.
- Straight:
- A song has a very upbeat melody, but its lyrics are about a death of a lover.
- A song sounds sad, but its lyrics are humourous.
- Exaggerated:
- A song has a ridiculously cute J-Pop melody, but the Refuge in Audacity lyrics are about murdering a man and raping his corpse For the Evulz, autocannibalism, burning churches, schools and hospitals, extremely gruesome suicide, and forgetting to brush your teeth after all that, ending with blatant mentions of Nazi Germany's war crimes and genocide.
- A Grindcore song has so many breakdowns and powerful double bass drops that listeners almost lose their grip on sphincters and growls and screams that are straight up inhuman, with hefty dose of Harsh Noise, but its lyrics are about how the singer loves God, vowing to promote peace and to end war and why people should love altogether.
- Downplayed: The lyrics have some lines which are quite out of place, but it doesn't disturb the overall mood of the song.
- Justified:
- A songwriter did it to make song more memorable.
- L'art pour l'art.
- A creator has got a very tough time in his life, but it doesn't affect on its music style.
- The dissonance between the lyrics and music is meant to add an extra layer of meaning to the song. For instance, dark lyrics may be accompanied by an upbeat melody to reflect how the speaker in the song is a Nightmare Fetishist or was Conditioned to Accept Horror.
- Inverted: The lyrics of a song fit with every melody ever, whether it's sad or happy.
- Subverted:
- The lyrics at the beginning seem to be a little out of place, but as song goes on, they get more fitting.
- The song is upbeat, though the lyrics paint an Earn Your Happy Ending kind of story.
- There is a Last Note Nightmare that makes the song more like its lyrics.
- Double Subverted:
- The song starts out dark, but as song goes they seem to get more fitting, however, the final lines reveal the happy part wasn't happy at all.
- The Last Note Nightmare was a Fake-Out Fade-Out.
- Parodied:
- A singer sings a very bright song about something extremely dark, while an audience terrified by the lyrics started to run away.
- An artist sings a cheerful song about murdering puppies. The listeners find it very catchy and not at all frightening.
- Zig-Zagged: Each verse is about something extremely dark, but the chorus is bright and peaceful.
- Averted:
- The lyrics fit the mood of the song.
- The track is an instrumental; there are no lyrics.
- Enforced: "We don't want the tune to be all heavy and metal, but the fact is dark and edgy lyrics sell better."
- Lampshaded: "Well, at least the tune was happy."
- Invoked:
- Every character has an Image Song. Even the Stepford Smiler, and their song is Painting the Medium.
- An artist creates a mashup consisting of two songs of different genres and tone.
- Exploited: When writing a new song, a band sets the edgy, political lyrics to an upbeat tune, allowing their song to gain widespread popularity for its catchy melody before the listeners realize the deep message.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Although the song had a catchy melody, it wasn't meaningful at all because the lyrics were too edgy or angsty to be taken seriously.
- Played for Laughs: A musician makes a hardcore or heavy metal remix of a lullaby or nursery rhyme.
- Played for Drama: An Image Song has a happy tune, but it is describing how the singer is a Stepford Smiler.
Back to Lyrical Dissonance
