Get lyrical replace current lyrics12/13/2023 In roughly four years he’d turned the idea of what a song lyric could do on its head and had already become weary of the world attempting to catch up with him. When Playboy had the gall to ask Bob Dylan what his songs were about in a 1966 interview, his answer was typically offbeat and elusive: “Oh, some are about four minutes some are about five and some, believe it or not, are about 11.” The publication of Blackbird Singing: Poems And Lyrics 1965-1999, in 2001, meanwhile, saw previously unseen poems nestle among famous lyrics, suggesting that McCartney had privately been writing poetry for some time. Later albums like Chaos And Creation In The Backyard showed a mature poet of rare sensitivity still making sense of the world around him. We all understand the tug of nostalgia that comes from the lyrics of “Penny Lane,” despite never having been there.Įqually, McCartney was capable of eloquently talking about topical concerns, from the generation gap opening in the 60s (“She’s Leaving Home”) to civil rights in the US ( “Blackbird”). Plenty of his lyrics (“Penny Lane,” “Eleanor Rigby”) came from places in his past his gift has been to find stories in them and to make them universal. Over the course of a remarkable career, Paul McCartney at his best has proven himself an astute chronicler of the world around him and of the human condition – a poet, in other words. John Lennon’s songwriting partner was no lyrical slouch, either. Take, for example, “Our Dad,” which begins “It wasn’t long before old dad/Was cumbersome – a drag/He seemed to get the message and/Began to pack his bag.” It’s no stretch at all to compare this poem about his father’s abandonment of his family with similarly soul-baring later song lyrics like “Mother” and “Julia.” His poetry, much like his lyrics, demonstrated his idiosyncratic worldview, delighting in wordplay and surrealist visions, and often drawing upon deeply personal and traumatic events. But with the publication of In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works, in 1964 and ’65, respectively, that’s exactly what John Lennon did. These days it’s difficult to imagine a member of the biggest band on the planet releasing a couple of volumes of absurdist poetry a few years into their career. Here, then, is our pick of just a few lyricists that many would consider poets. However you see it, there are many musicians who are poets in their fans’ eyes, and their song lyrics are taken seriously today – studied in classrooms and published as annotated, hardback collections. The thing that sets poetry apart from prose is that its impact depends on a musicality in language and rhythm, much like a song lyric. Yet before the written word, poetry was performed and passed on through song. For many, the fact that the success of a song lyric tends to hinge upon on its accompanying music, the voices that sing it, and the performance itself means that it cannot be considered poetry. A master of what many would deem “poetic lyrics,” Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in October 2016, reigniting the long-running debate over whether song lyrics should be considered poetry.
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