It describes high-sounding, pretentious, showy language with little meaning used to impress people, and explodes enjoyably when pronounced, but how it is used in lyrics, and does it affect the natures of the song itself? The various parts of this word – noun or adjective, as well as bombaster (someone who stuffs or pads things), are associated with bluster, pomposity, ranting, rant, nonsense, empty talk, humbug, hot air, blether, blather or claptrap, and there is no shortage of that around in public or private life, used to many ends.
But when used in song, does using bombast or similar often accompany other lyrics of a similar quality, or can it be used effectively? The Fall’s Mark E Smith was fond of the word, and his lyrics variously intrigued and bemused listeners as to their meaning. Smith himself wouldn’t take bombast from anyone, but could he also give it out? Let’s have a look at a couple of examples:
Bombast by The Fall, from 1985’s This Nation’s Saving Grace, is one which warns others of Smith’s own bombast, which was no doubt intimidating and considerable, but perhaps while ironically delivered, perhpas here is more used in the sense of caustic, fierce invective:
All those whose mind entitles themselves,
And whose main entitle is themselves,
Shall feel the wrath of my bombast!
Then, by contrast there’s the comparatively light and floaty, at least by Fall standards, Arid Al's Dream from 1991’s Shift-Work, with its quasi-scentific descriptions:
From the interstellar combination
The colours were brown and cream
And he gets pre-psicognition
Everywhere he goes
It screams psi-cog from doorways
And upper shut off windows
Had a brain with a weight of four ounces
His psi-cog was very advanced
And quit just is not his stick
He wasn't taking any crap from you, dick
But he got a dose of a psi-cog
He got a dose of a psi-cog dream …
… Bombast
No boast
Dream.
More bombast now from the other side of the Atlantic. Another style and subject matter entirely comes in Soundgarden’s Attrition from the 2012 album King Animal, Chris Cornell describing war-torn scenes that are as much bomb blast and bombast:
Lay here under bombast and gloom
A parade of ghouls marches by
Headed down to Nero's tomb
Raising flags and burning rights
Warm yourself by a god-made fire
Pinocchio with spinning eyes
Laugh aloud under bomb-lit skies
A victim's smile never lies
Grant Lee Phillips meanwhile uses the word in the context of obsession and insecurity in a relationship in the song Runaway from 2007’s album Strangenet:
Gutter trickle, bombast, a gunpowder wind
Wanna let it all sink in
Like a rain collecting, I held on to you
Even when you begged me not to
Can't you see I'm all bound up
A million knots down in my gut
Well, I feel I've had enough, enough
I just wanna run away
Run, run away, run, run away
Then there’s the rather unusual, most definitely bombastically over-the-top big sound, almost jazz swing tribute to the American writer Edgar Allan Poe by Lou Reed from his 2003 album The Raven, named after the famous short story. No bombast from Poe, says Reed, but plenty more within the song instead:
These are the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
Not exactly the boy next door
He'll tell you about Usher
Whose house burned in his mind
His love for his dear sister
Her death would drive him wild
The murder of a stranger
The murder of a friend
The callings from the pits of hell
That never seem to end
These are the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
Not exactly the boy next door
These are the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
Not exactly the boy next door
The diabolic image of the city and the sea
The chaos and the carnage that reside deep within me
Decapitations, poisonings, hellish not a bore
You won't need 3D glasses to pass beyond this door
Edgar Allan Poe
Not exactly the boy next door
No Nosferatu Vincent Price or naked women here
A mind unfurled, a mind unbent is all we have here
Truth, fried orangutans flutter to the stage
Leave your expectations home
And listen to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
We give you the soliloquy the raven at the door
Flaming pits the moving walls no equilibrium
No ballast, no bombast
The unvarnished truth we've got
Mind swoons guilty
Cooking ravings in a pot
Edgar Allan Poe
Not exactly the boy next door
Guided By Voices take on the quality of the word in a song that captures the current political climate in their 2014 song Difficult Outburst and Breakthrough, from the album Motivational Jumpsuit. Perhaps the many political and social problems are currently caused by a bombastic, polarised trend in social media and more:
Difficult outburst and breakthrough
Something bombastic to make you
Change your point of view
Before you focus on anything new
How about a bit of pop now? Going back to the beginning of the millennium, here’s Britney Spears, proclaiming bombastic as a good thing from her 2001 album Britney. But is bombastic only really here because it rhymes with fantastic, and not really taking any account of it’s true meaning?
I am here to testify
That you're the only one I belong to
I don't know where to start
It turned into an art
Not to show the world that it was you
Who made me realise not to compromise
The fact that you and I should need
I know we're gonna get, know we're gonna get
Bombastic Love
So fantastic
Where I'm completely yours and you are mine
And It's gonna be exactly like in a movie
When we fall in love for the first time
This dubious rhyming tendency could be the case elsewhere too, because The Artful Dodger and Craig David seem unable to resist the same somewhat malapropic use in their hit Woman Trouble, from the year 2000:
I feel fantastic, bombastic,
Ecstatically astounded
How a girl can really lose her brain
I feel surrounded, confounded
Emotionally dumbfounded
To think you've nearly won your game
That’s enough bombast from this end for now, but now you’re invited to bang out a few other examples in comments below. Feel free to share your examples, fictional, factual, or in any cultural context, in comments below. Do these songs make you think of something else? Then also feel free to comment below, on the contact page, or on social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube. Please subscribe, follow and share.
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...