Song lyrics that can stand alone as poetry

[rimbaud]

the music is something that can not be explained or repeated by anyone, it just kicks a~~, and the lyrics are pure poetry


Led zeppelin kashmir

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face
With stars to fill my dream.
I am a traveler of both time and space
To be where I have been.

To sit with elders of a gentle race
This world has seldom seen.
They talk of days for which they sit and wait
When all will be revealed.

Talk an' song from tongues of lilting grace
Whose sounds caress my ear.
But not a word I heard could I relate
The story was quite clear.
Whoa-ohh-oh
Whoa-ohhh-oh-oh

Ooooh
Oh baby, I've been flyin'
Nooo-yeah
Oh mama there
Ain't no denyin'

Oh!
Ooooh-yes
I've been flyin'
Ma-ma-ma
Ain't no denyin'
No denyin'-uh

Oh!
All I see turns to brown
As the sun burns the ground.
And my eyes fill with sand
As I scan this wasted land.
Tryin' to find
Tryin' to find
Where I've been.

Oh pilot of the storm who leaves no trace
Like thoughts inside a dream
Who hid the path that led me to that place
Of yellow desert screen.

My shangri-la beneath the summer moon
I will return again.
Sure as the dust that floats high in June
When movin' through Kashmir.

[Heathcliff]

Yer, Rimbaud, that is pretty poetic, the verses in particular.

Anyone know Low by Flo Rida and T-Pain? Can poetry get that coarse?
Would that still be considered a love sonnet?

[stlukesguild]

Hmm, I like to think that, but then I recall poetry started off as a sort of song-based art - Orpheus, Homer, and the rest, all accompanied by music - not to mention the Classical Chinese poets, the Vedic Indian poets, and others. I think Japanese poetry started off as textual, but I am not sure.

Certainly both music and poetry began in song. Sappho supposedly wrote music to the poems and the Biblical Psalms were songs. In these instances the lyrics stand up separate from the music... and I am not saying this is impossible. Certainly Wagner's and Richard Strauss' opera librettos can stand alone as literature... as can many of the German lieder and French chanson set to poetry by Goethe, Heine, Morike, Verlaine, Gautier, etc...

The point is, is that the separation is really unnatural, so I have a bit of trouble understanding it.

That is my point as well. I cannot understand why some wish to experience the lyrics of Led Zeppelin or the Doors as separate from the music. Songs and opera and oratorios and masses are completely different beast from the poem. It seems to me no different than discussing the music and the screenplay and the photography and even the acting of a film as independent entities. As Petrarch'sLove pointed out John Williams music to Schindler's List was powerfully effective... but she had to wonder how it might have functioned in a lesser film... or a film that was overly sentimental. Fred MacMurray's acting in Double Indemnity was perfectly suited to the film... but would have been over-the-top and even comic in another context. My guess is that many high-school students are introduced to the notion that pop lyrics are poetry (which they certainly are... I'm disputing this) either through teachers wishing to grab their attention... or simply on their own as these lyrics become virtually the only exposure that many will ever have to poetry... and certainly the only instance in which many will actually memorize verse.

I think really it is that music can work without good lyrics, but that music in itself is not poetry, but I don't think lyrics themselves work if they are bad with good music. The song itself works, but I don't think the lyrics do. So if we maintain distinction, it is easy to suggest one work is mediocre in one regard, but the compensation of the whole manages to keep the thing afloat.

Most works of art have strengths and weaknesses. An artist as undeniably central as Michelangelo can be criticized for the absence of a real setting (there is little effort placed upon the background) as well as for his lack of concern for the individual character of his people. These are more than compensated for by his strengths... and seriously... the "deficient" areas are never really "bad" to the point that they detract.

Schubert built his vocal masterpiece, the Winterreise, upon the mediocre poems of Wilhelm Müller. The poems are certainly not great on their own... they do not stand up to Goethe or Heine or Holderlin. They are just adequate examples of German Romantic poetry. The music, however, not only compensates for the poetry... but ennobles it... essentially reinterprets it or re-imagines it so that it resonates far more than the words alone do. In this manner I think of how apples are surely among the most common-place or mundane of subject matter for the artist... but in Cezanne's hands they are transformed into something more so that I never find myself thinking, "Great handling of paint. Brilliant composition. I just wish he'd painted something less mundane."

So, we can have the opposite, where Dylan isn't the best singer in an objective sense, but when he uses his lyrics, they become a sort of performance art work that is legitimized under the standards of good music, for the sake that their lyrics are top notch.

But certainly the music... including his singing... is perfectly suited to the lyrics so that together they both become more than what they are separate.

I've always loved this one... the central core of the Hebrew faith reduced to pure satire in one verse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BH8U_z7Q6c

[JCamilo]

Isnt there an anedocte about Mallarme, when a singer did a homage to him singing one of his poems and afterwards asked him if he liked when the poem was turned into music, Mallarme answered: Why, wasnt musical before?

Anyways, I would say that the answer of lies on Borges, when he says a poem recall his oral origem. That is all, a poem only tries to produce an effect which made us recall of sound. It is not music, just like a painting is not a tree. While the lyrics of a song is really part of the music.

But like in any art, exchange is fundamental, limits will be broken. Hamlet is not really a romance or novel, but a script for a play. It is write in a way that only makes sense if we are aware that wast meant to be said by actors. Of course Shakespeare writting quality makes pleasant to read it and ignore the author, but would all scripts be that good?

The problem mostly is that modern pop music, even Dylan and Velvet are pop, need some basic rules in their lyrics that are catchy and not exactly the best poetry. Beatles pretty much are master of this. A few lines well placed, but not the entire work.
I would give example of brazilian culture, we are more musical than writen. Cultural wise, there is a demand for good lyricist, so poets are often seen also writting musical pieces. It was also a better way to make money. And the popular culture is very strong, if you seek the old samba lyrics, you will see they are mostly written following rules of poetic metric from popular oral poetry. And we had Vinicius de Moraes, a poet that was a great musician, and would walk from one art to another as easily as he would left empty a beer bottle.

[Jeremydav]

Visions of Johanna by Dylan is perhaps one of my favorite poems, and it is indeed a song. I could read it over and over (though I prefer to listen to it, harmonica adds a nice touch).

[Scheherazade]

I've never heard this song.
Is it a boppy, girly tune?
I hope it is, would sound alright.
Only I'm not going to check it out, so I'm not disappointed.

Mine was not a serious post, Heath, but you should listen to some Velvet Underground so I will add to Orphan's list (more "girly" songs this time ):

I'm Sticking With You

After Hours

[dfloyd]

along with those who wrote the music: Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, and, of course, Cole Porter. Just take some time and watch the old B&W movies: songs like Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Night and Day, You'll never Know I Much I Love You .... Ah yes those were the days!

[Heathcliff]

Mine was not a serious post, Heath, but you should listen to some Velvet Underground so I will add to Orphan's list (more "girly" songs this time ):

I'm Sticking With You

After Hours

Yes I know... Still, it is amasing the impression you can get from a series of lyrics, totally different to the song.

In English last year, my teacher brought in the lyrics to I am a Rock, I am an Island by Simon and Garfunkle. None of the class had ever heard it before. She made us spend a whole period trying to put a tune to it. Nobody was even close.

This is some of it:
" A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I've built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island. "

Really amazing how hard it was for my class, although it is very difficult.
Like what wlz said in page two, Simon and Garfunkle are awesome. Maybe no in those exact words... still.

I listened to those, Sher, I really liked I'm Sticking With You. Very interesting. Very cute and girly.

[Scheherazade]

I listened to those, Sher, I really liked I'm Sticking With You. Very interesting. Very cute and girly.

Have you watched the movie "Juno"? It is in the soundtrack.

[Heathcliff]

Have you watched the movie "Juno"? It is in the soundtrack.

I haven't seen the movie. I should.

[The Comedian]

For me, the songwriter who has consistently written the best lyrics is Bruce Springsteen. And, of all the popular artists that I listen to, he is the one whom I would rank first.

I love songs that tell simple, but emotional stories that make me bond with singer. And Springsteen does that better than anyone that I've ever listened to.

Of note here, I could listen or read the words of his song "The River" over and over and over and over for their simple story and their profound impact.

[Paulclem]

Look What I Found In My Beer -lyrics by he Beautiful South

Look what I found in my beer
A couple of dancing ladies and a ticket out of here
Look what I've found in my beer
A start to being lonely and an end to my career
Look what he found in his gin
Lights' looking lively when love's looking dim
Look what he found in his gin
Souls look heavy when personality's thin

Look what I found in the drum
A lifelong beat and a replacement to the rum
Look what he found in his guitar
Another fellow thinker and a chauffeur to my heart
Look what I found in the mic
An end to screwed-up drinking and a Paul I actually like
Look what I found in my beer
A free test drive for a heart I cannot steer
Look what I found in my beer -The Beautiful South

Look what I found in my drink
A brain without a plughole and a sink without a think
Look what I found in my drink
A "love you" to the barmaid and a too-familiar wink
Look what we found in his booze
The reflection of him and his children without shoes
Look what we found in his booze
This mornings jigsaw in a hill of last nights clues
Look what I found in the drum
A lifelong beat and a replacement to the rum
Look what he found in his guitar
Another fellow thinker and a chauffeur to my heart
Look what I found in the mic
An end to screwed-up drinking and a Paul I actually like
Look what I found in my beer
A free test drive for a heart I cannot steer
Look what I found in my beer
Look what we found in the dance
Look what I've found in the song
Low expectations in a large pile of cans
It maked the drink seem weak,the friendship strong

I think these lyrics by The Beautiful South make interesting poetry, and the song's pretty good too. It describes Paul Heaton's well nown struggle with lohol.

The question is an interesting one, and may blur with more technology. In the meantime, as hs been said, poetry as been combined it music, such as Eliot's Old Possums Book of Cats, and art, for example Easter Wings.

There's no real reason why any artistic disciplne should be kpt isolated. Poetry is an effective element with music, though as JBI has pointed out, bad lyrics can't hide in a song - see the words of Maggie May, which make little sense.

I couldn't find a link for ths song on Youtube, but here's another one about - surprisingly - a table. A poetic conceit if evr there was one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNdqtcXy9vs

[OrphanPip]

There's no real reason why any artistic disciplne should be kpt isolated. Poetry is an effective element with music, though as JBI has pointed out, bad lyrics can't hide in a song - see the words of Maggie May, which make little sense.

While I don't think the lyrics to Maggie May are fantastic, they do make perfect sense. I don't know what you find confusing about them.

He was a young man who was in love with an older woman and she left him... the end. Nothing too special about it, but meh it's Rod Stewart.

Wake up Maggie
I think I got something to say to you;
it's late September and I really should be back at school.
I know I keep you amused
but I feel I'm being used

oh
Maggie
I couldn't have tried anymore.
You lured me away from home
just to save you from being alone.
You stole my heart and that's what really hurts.
The morning sun
when it's in your face
really shows your age

but that don't worry me none
in my eyes you're ev'rything.
I laughed at all of your jokes
my love you didn't need to coax

oh
Maggie
I couldn't have tried anymore.
You lured me away from home
just to save you from being alone.
You stole my soul
that's a pain I can do without.
All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand

but you turned into a lover
and
Mother
what a lover !
You wore me out.
All you did was wreck my bed
and in the morning kick me in the head

oh
Maggie
I couldn't have tried anymore.
You lured me away from home
'cause you didn't want to be alone.
You stole my heart
I couldn't leave you if I tried.
I suppose I could collect my books and get back to school.
Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool.
Or find myselfe a rock and roll band that needs a helpin' hand.
Oh
Maggie
I wish I'd never seen your face.
You lured me away from home
just to save you from being alone.
You stole my heart and that's what really hurts.
The morning sun
when it's in your face
really shows your age

but that don't worry me none
in my eyes you're ev'rything.
I laughed at all of your jokes
my love you didn't need to coax

oh
Maggie
I couldn't have tried any face

you made a first-class fool out of me

but I'm as blind as a fool can be

you stole my heart but I love you anyway.
Maggie
I wish I'd never seen your face.
I'll get on back home one of these days.

[Paulclem]

He doesn't make any sense. Does he love her or not? I like the tune though.

[Sancho]

Chuck Berry, Promised Land

I left my home in Norfolk Virginia, California on my mind
Straddled that Greyhound and rode him into Raleigh
And on across Caroline

We stopped in Charlotte and bypassed Rock Hill
And we never was a minute late
We was ninety miles out of Atlanta by sundown
Rollin’ cross the Georgia state

Charlie Daniels, Uneasy Rider

I was takin’ a trip out to L.A.
Toolin’ along in my Chevrolet
Tokin’ on a number and diggin’ on the radio

Just as I crossed the Mississippi line
I heard that highway start to whine
And I knew that left rear tire was about to blow

Homer, The Odyssey

Sing to me of the man, Oh Muse
Of the hero who traveled far and wide
Driven off course again and again
After he plundered the heights of Troy

Many cities he knew
Many customs he learned
Mightily he suffered on the open sea
Fighting for his life and to bring his brothers home