I just listened to a live concert of Simon & Garfunkel. Well, a recording of a live concert. It was live in like 1982 or something. Anyway, in “The Sounds of Silence” as they sang, “In the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more,” the people cheered, which just annoyed me. But I love how the stupidity of that action is highlighted by the following line - “people hearing without listening.”
Similarly, there’s a Colin Meloy song - “Wonder” - where he mentions “a weird and a wonderful show” and people cheer. But the weird and wonderful show is actually the birth of his son, not a concert.
I think reactions to lines like that, in trivial ways, just degrades the meaning that the writer is actually trying to get. You can’t just chop up literary works - songs included - and cheer at the parts you like. Context shapes a work.
