Maiden Albums: Head to Head

Vote for your favourite song from each pair

  • Total voters
    34
  • Poll closed .
They are formidable foes and equally flawed. One receives way more hate than it deserves and the other receives way more love than it deserves. Alex wins for the instrumental but the whole of Drifter is slightly more consistent.
 
Drifter, for a Maiden song, sucks. The lyrics are complete cheese and a couple parts of the music are absolute garbage. It isn’t the worst Maiden song but it’s close.

Alexander the Great may have flawed lyrics, but they work. It’s fun, the music is godly, Bruce sounds great, it’s a pretty much perfect song. There’s a lot of... lack of love among many members on this forum which seems very much unjustified.

Choosing Drifter over Alex? IRYO, but no.
 
I completely agree, Drifter musically is a very basic rock'n'roll kinda of song, really boring (apart from the riff of the introduction and the bluesy solo in the middle, the rest is really subpar compared to Maiden standards) I'm not even gonna start talking about the lyrics (do they really deserve that name??). When played live with the crowd interaction, it was a little bit better but still a weak song.

Alexander from a musical point of view is one of the greatest in Maiden's history, then the lyrics, well of course it could have been better but could have been a lot worse and I'm not that shocked (they've done way worse in this department).

Just my opinion of course, feel free to totally disagree :)
 
I think one thing I like about Alex's lyrics are how despite getting some facts messed up, they're very humanizing lyrics. The entire song tells of how great this man was, nearly godlike, and then in the final line "he died of fever in Babylon". Whether or not that's true, the point is clear - no mortal man is better than any of the rest of us. We might do awe-inspiring things, but in the end, we all end up in the grave.
 
I think the final line being about his death has to do with death being the last part of a person's biography, which is what Alexander the Great the song is. A shitty biography.
 
I just don't see any fine crafting in the lyrics to Alexander. It's a bit of a shame, because the music is pretty decent.
 
I think "Alex" would have worked better as an instrumental. Not that I dislike the lyrics, but the music is strong enough to not really need any.
 
Brigantium said:
I just don't see any fine crafting in the lyrics to Alexander. It's a bit of a shame, because the music is pretty decent.
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The music, for me, is so good that I still consider Alexander the Great a Top 10 song despite my disdain for its lyrics. It's a phenomenal showcase of the band's knack for melody and the dynamic relationship of the rhythm section.
 
Unpopular Opinion(?): Where Eagles Dare has some of Maiden's worst lyrics. Worse than To Tame A Land and Alexander The Great.
 
Alex's lyrics aren't the song's only problem. The instrumental section is awesome, some of the best music Maiden ever recorded, but everything around it seems so forced. The verses and choruses are so uninspired, with bad vocal melodies and a half-assed performance from Bruce. There's an interview out there taken while Maiden were working on the album and they say that there won't be an epic but they are working on an instrumental. It seems pretty obvious to me that the instrumental was the middle section of Alex and for some reason they decided to shoehorn it into some filler.
 
Man, if Bruce is half-assing it on that song, it only proves that he's the greatest singer of all time.
 
If I'm being honest, most Maiden lyrics are...more often on the cheesy/awkward end of the spectrum than not. Alexander is really no different in that regard so I don't quite get the enhanced level of lyrical disdain for that tune. To Tame A Land and Rime are just as awkward in places to my ears (even though I consider them legendary tunes). Where Eagles Dare, one of my favorite tunes of all time, is a lyrical schlock-fest. Hey...if you're going to call out Alexander, you might as well call out 80% of their catalogue.

But that's part of the "charm" for me - they're good at writing nerdy, literal lyrics (about topics I've always geeked out on) that usually sound squished together. Like a cult movie, it's an acquired taste, and requires some suspension of disbelief.... but once you embrace it, it's awesome.
 
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Apart from a few moments (the introduction of the two dice players, for example) I don't find ROTM all that silly or awkward. Also, they got much better in the lyrics department since the 90's/reunion, imho. Well, except for Bruce. I know a lot of people love his lyrics, but I'd much rather listen to clunky silly stuff like ATG or Where Eagles Dare or even Weekend Warrior than to hear either his silly mysticisms (though he actually got better with time, the solo career and SSOASS being his worst offenders) or his "poetic" stuff that sometimes sounds cool, but has no discernable meaning at all while taking itself way too seriously (Starblind, If Eternity Should Fail). At least make it completely nonsensical and enjoy the phonetics (like Cocteau Twins) and don't sound more stoned than the entire crew of Grateful Dead (I mean, if China Cat Sunflower could be mistaken for your work, you're in trouble). That said, Empire of the Clouds is (lyrics-wise!!!) absolutely stellar and I wish he gave us more of stuff like that.

And thankfully, at least he manages to mostly avoid the sesquipedalian Epica route (Semblance of Liberty, Deter the Tyrant, Victims of Contingency, Consign to Oblivion etc., "I can see, I perceive this ain't me!"), but he's a native speaker, they're not, so I'm more critical to him.

Anyway, unless the lyrics make me do a double take (which, unfortunately, ATG, TTAL or QFF all do), I can happily ignore them. Oh, and climbing like monkeys, but that's expected.

Edge of Darkness is actually - funnily enough - right on the edge, it manages to quote the source material directly and it is a bit shoehorned, but I think it works ("Here I am the knife in my hand // And now I understand why the genius must die")
 
I think that literally the only Maiden lyric that makes me go "this is awful" is Age of Innocence. And I dont like the music on that one so it doesn't matter. Maybe the bit about the car in Wildest Dreams, too.
These kind of discussions make me realise how little stock I put in lyrics and how little I pay attention. There are definitely lines here and there that I love but that can be as much to do with melody or timing as words. In the example of Alexander, its one of those songs were its hard to make out what he saying half the time so I don't bother. The verses march along nicely, the vocals fit, regardless of the words. The chorus is a bit shit. When Bruce shuts up the good bit arrives. Alot of the time I'm just waitin for Bruce's bit to be over so we get back to a good part.
 
Not a close match up in sight, but Killers is only able to take three of them. Somewhere in Time wins 8-3 and earns top seed in its group.

Up next, the Number of the Beast versus The Final Frontier :fencing:
 
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