Song Lyrics

TrixRabbi

Active member
I did a quick search and didn't find a dedicated thread to song lyrics, but I thought it'd be a worthwhile topic here, separate from the music thread in the off topic general chat. But I was reminded of a derail in the Louise Gluck thread awhile back that dovetailed into the complexity or lack thereof of song lyrics, pop music, etc. and I thought it was worth exploring more in depth.

Of course, the big name to come to mind here is Bob Dylan, whose Nobel Prize I know is still a point of contention with a lot of people here and elsewhere. I'd like to avoid a debate of whether or not Dylan deserved the Nobel, because there's plenty of other places for that here and it's been discussed to death, but maybe dig deeper into song lyrics as a form of literature and poetry.

What are the key differences between lyrics for music and written poems? Clearly some songs can have great lyrics that simply don't work as written poems, and vice versa, but why is that? Also, why do we engage in such a low art/high art dichotomy when it comes to this particular medium? Are the lyrics in modern pop music "dumbed down" or has it always been this way?

Hoping we can discuss lyrics in a deeper way and maybe post some of our favorites and explore them as an important and one of the most widely consumed genres of literature.
 

SpaceCadet

Quiet Reader
Interesting topic.

I once tried to write lyrics, just for fun, and soon realized that it is not easy to do, not at all.

I believe that aim, constraints and rules are quite different for lyrics than what they are for poetry, hence the resulting differences between those two forms of art.

Lyrics have to fit within musical lines, they must deliver a message or feeling that appeals/speak to a given audience, and they have to have that specific quality that makes them stick to mind.

You ask ‘why we engage in a low art/high art dichotomy?’; I would tend to say that there are no dichotomy involved in this; it is more a question of what we are looking for at a given moment.

*

About Whiskey is my kind of lullaby:

As I understood it, that song speaks of youth, of loneliness, of wanting to belong to or to fit in somewhere, and of taking the road to addiction (a form of alienation and of rebellion) as a way to respond to those challenges.

I am no judge to tell if the lyrics are good or bad or else, but they seem to carry the message they are meant to convey.
 
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