Who’s been waiting for a new track? This month’s release from Lipcrack is Skullen.
I wrote this song after a visit to Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles years ago. I was blown away by the music industry stores packed with every type of merchandise imaginable, including skull rings. Once I had the theme in my head, I started thinking back to the old cowboy-and-Indian television days and the way scalping was portrayed as a form of trophy taking. That imagery became intertwined with vampire bloodlust and darker cult themes, and from there Skullen was born a dark, brooding track.
Originally, though, I planned to release Partymood Rampage next because it’s one of my personal favorites from Off The Edge. The problem was that the track raised another issue entirely — explicit lyrics.
A lot of the material on the album was reworked over time, especially after overseas influences started shaping the newer versions of the songs and along the way I discovered there are a huge range of opinions when it comes to explicit language in music. What surprised me most was how many tracks on Spotify are now marked as containing explicit lyrics. I listened to a few out of curiosity just to see how other artists were approaching it, and honestly a lot of it didn’t impress me. At the same time, though, I felt the language worked naturally within some of my own tracks which might sound a little biased but its the general opinion I was left with.
That got me thinking about censorship, mainstream culture, and where explicit lyrics fit into modern music.
You can technically be fined for swearing in public in Australia. Years ago I was even accused of swearing in a workplace office, which really annoyed me because most people who know me know I don’t swear at all unless I jam my finger in a door or something equally painful.
So no, Lipcrack didn’t suddenly turn into some revenge-driven explicit lyric project.
From what I found, it was late-80s and 90s hip hop that really pushed raw explicit language into the mainstream. I largely missed most of that era because I’ve never paid much attention to mainstream music trends. Apart from hearing bands like Limp Bizkit over the years with some very explicit lyrics, I’ve mostly stayed in my own lane musically.
That’s probably why I still feel slightly disconnected from how normalized explicit lyrics have become on streaming platforms. Even so, some of the reworked tracks from Off The Edge ended up including the occasional F-word — not for shock value, but because it added a sense of rebellion, realism, and intensity that suited the songs.
That said, I still consider Lipcrack more of a mainstream act in spirit — or at least what mainstream used to mean before everything became built around controversy and attention-grabbing. I’m not interested in manufacturing outrage just to get noticed.
Because of that, I’ve decided to hold back some of the more explicit tracks for now. Since I want to continue promoting songs through YouTube ads and other platforms, it makes more sense at this stage to push the more conventional material first, which is why Skullen gets the spotlight ahead of Partymood Rampage.
Off The Edge was always meant to represent stepping into the unknown.
And that’s about it, I could go on about explicit lyrics because it is so controversial but once it becomes mainstream it’s hardly controversial is it, so it almost becomes paradoxical and we end up running round and round in circles much like a mosh pit which also expands on the themes of frustration, revelry and fun. As I’ve already mentioned I was fairly happy to make it onto the Riot playlist and as per usual found out in between things that you really need to be on around 20 play lists to get any real traction so I will be attempting that along the way which I should add as a final note, during this month I completed a short listing of all the potential song promotion services Lipcrack can run with in an attempt to improve our promotion efforts on Spotify.
Enjoy listening to Skullen. We’re about to kick off another round of mailouts and promotion for the new release.
Skullen : https://www.lipcrack.com/audiolip.html
Till next month,
Lipcrack.