TARA DYER STOYLE: A constant search for music with substance

I’m nearly 50 years old, and as I get older I long for music with substance, with lyrics that touch me in some way that I can relate to.

I started to write this column about the atrocious music that is being recorded by young musicians these days, but it wouldn’t be fair to say that all young musicians are guilty of contributing to this growing list or that all older musicians are producing quality material.

Music is loaded with the sounds of people of all ages, singing about life and love, who have never been poor, never had to work hard and have only experienced life in a very limited way. And although I am aware that these people have gone through their own set of trials and heartache, there are some things that only a person who has suffered and toiled, lacked and wanted and lost, can write about and perform with real conviction.

For example: Sean Rowe. Sean is 44 years old and sings lyrics that tell a vivid story about a hopeful man holding on to the possibility of love.

Though I run through the fire

I get colder, colder, colder

I’m not green, I’m not retired

I’m just older, older, older

And I’m just the fray around the promise of you

So many times I thought of hangin’ it up

So many shots but they were never enough.

Tyler Childers is a 28-year-old from Kentucky who paints colorful scenes of love with unashamed emotion:

Now I ain’t the sharpest chisel

That your hands have ever held

But darlin’ I could love you well

Til’ the roll is called on high

I’ve seen my share of trouble

And I’ve held my weight in shame

But I’m baptized in your name

Lovely Lady May.

Brandi Carlile, who’s 38, sings about the joyous reality of having a child in “The Mother:”

The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep

She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep

She filled my life with color, canceled plans and trashed my car

But none of that was ever who we are.

Just a few years ago, at the tender age of 75, Bob Dylan was still writing about lost love:

Nineteen bird dogs, and one old measly hound

take all 20 of them to track my baby down.

Two trains running, neither of them going where I have to go

One going to Houston, one going to San Antonio.

She’s gone but not forgotten

Cryin’ wouldn’t make her stay

Oh, she left me early one mornin’

Just got up and walked away.

There are standouts from every genre and every age group — Childish Gambino, Jason Isbell, Rival Sons, The White Buffalo and Gary Clark Jr. are pretty good examples.

I guess I’ll never be the kind of woman who will listen to Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber or even hometown favorite Luke Bryan and feel that they are offering me something unique or meaningful. I believe a lot of musicians are just following a formula: x melody + y lyrics (mostly written by someone else) = $$$ … and, hell, if I could make millions of dollars pumping out the same words rearranged to slightly different music, I probably would, too.

I do listen to and enjoy my share of “fluff,” but it’s the true artistry of music that keeps me searching the internet and old vinyl in hopes of hearing a few words that will feed my soul and leave me hungry for more.