Look through Liz Phair’s song catalog and you’ll find many songs labeled “Explicit Lyrics.” You don’t have to listen very long to know it’s an appropriate label in more ways than one. She sings about many explicit sexual topics. But her material is also explicit in another sense of the word’s definition.
Within her lyrics, Phair uses a variety of very rich similes and metaphors that create explicit images and unusual connections. And as we've discussed here, connecting things that aren’t typically connected is a key to trigger new ideas and possibilities in your thinking. Among the connections Phair makes in her lyrics are:
- Your eyelashes sparkle like gilded grass
- Baby you're the best magazine advice
- Your kisses are as wicked as an F-16
- You f**k like a volcano
- They play me like a pit bull in the basement
- You're an angel with wings afire
There are certainly others that I couldn’t asterisk out and still have them make any sense!
But without being explicit in the first sense, you can certainly look for opportunities to be explicit more frequently in the latter sense to envision new possibilities and communicate your ideas in ways that will get you labeled a “creative instigator.”
