Vinicius de Moraes is maybe the best brazilian sonnet writer and also one of founders of Bossa Nova musical style.
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Vinicius de Moraes is maybe the best brazilian sonnet writer and also one of founders of Bossa Nova musical style.
that was my point! though maybe in a less abstract way.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by JCamilo
holy quartet
leonard cohen
bob dylan
lou reed
ian curtis
Formally lyrics are poetry, though usually pretty bad one. ;)
Song lyrics are absolutely poetry.
Song lyrics are absolutely poetry.
Certainly. How good or bad is another question altogether.
I agree, song lyrics are poetry.
Ever heard Be Quiet and Drive (Accoustic Version) ~ Deftones? The lyrics behind that is a short poem in my view, they are amazing words.
Stairway to Heaven ~ Led Zeppelin is another I would consider poetry. Bohemian Rhapsody ~ Queen too.
In fact, I consider all songs with lyrics a form of poetry. Just depends on how good they are, as to whether I like the poetry.
Maybe it should be a new form of poetry - 'Lyrical' poetry.
I definitly think song lyrics are poetry in their own right and in some ways even more beautiful because it is accompanied by music
BUT
It also depends on the type of music, artist and song.
I believe Bob Dylan's song are worthy of being called poetry. Every song has a story, every song is filled with raw emotion. He sings it exactly as he sees it. Same with Simon and Garfunkel.. Each song is unique.
I do not believe songs by artists such as My chemical romance and bullet for my valentine have any worth what so ever. So i have basically contradicted myself. ha...
HA there we go.. someone who has an excellent taste in music and knows exactly what i mean.. i think. ahem.Quote:
Originally Posted by ben.!
The End by The Doors is definitly poetry.. so are many other songs by them.
Cat Stevens too. Believe it or not MANY of Metallica's song are worthy of the title poetry such as Nothing Else Matter (FANTASTIC SONG) and Wherever I May Roam
songs about longing and pain..
A brilliant song is Ain't No Reason By Brett Dennen i only discovered it the other day. Very touching.
Structually they are similar to a pantoum, as the lines are repeated at intervals and roll into the next stanza. Quality is a whole other issue, and as we all have seen and heard, something doesn't have to be well written to be popular.
Tiny Dancer ~ Metallica, yes. I'm sure you also know Metallica's music was done by a symphonic orchestra.
*bump*
I suppose I prefer resurrecting an old thread, rather than starting another one on music lyrics as poetry. A couple nights ago, I saw Bob Dylan here in Portland, and, having always loved his music, seeing him live, I think, only enlivened my love for his music and poetic lyrics even more - an easy example to make in interpreting music lyrics as poetry, but an undeniable one. He did well at balancing older songs with newer ones, too, but I really wish he would have performed, in my opinion, one particular song with some of his best poetry, as follows:
Quote:
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
And who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was woundedin hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
And the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and speak itand think it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it,
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
I agree that song lyrics can be considered poetic - some of the examples already listed are obvious proof of this...
There's been a lot of buzz and debate about this in other forums that I go to in the last week, as articles started popping up about Bob Dylan deserving the Nobel Prize in literature.
Personally, I think that Bob Dylan is going to end up being one of the most endearing "poets" of the 20th century, particularly the latter half. While 'Like A Rolling Stone' may forever be known as the crowning achievement of rock 'n roll, songs like 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall', 'It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding', 'Desolation Row', 'Not Dark Yet' and others will be dissected in English classes as examples of great poetry.
Of course, my opinion is very slanted by the inextricable link in my mind between Bob Dylan and literature, as I was introduced to Bob by my favorite high school English teacher, and Bob Dylan's intense writing style got me interested in literature.
Leonard Cohen also deserves a special mention for his excellent use of words. However, I do not believe that other great songwriters, such as Paul Simon, Warren Zevon, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, and John Lennon, could be studied the same way. Their lyrics are beautiful in song form, but are generally completely dependent on the music.
Well, Dylan has been appreciated by the academies as a writer already - he's in the Norton, he has classes taught on him across different countries - he is very much a literary figure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Desolation
Cohen is a different beast, since, though he is an excellent song-writer, he is also a renowned novelist and poet, working in literature before music - so there is that tinge. He too though has been accepted into the academia, even for his song lyrics.
But lets be honest - these guys are two great geniuses - the best of their genre. There have, historically been fantastic songwriters - poetry itself was highly tied to music - The Iliad itself was a sung poem. That does not mean though, that lyrics need to be good - I think, especially now, catchy is considered better than poetic in song lyrics.
Though, there will always be mediocre non-readers of poetry who prostitute some meh song lyric as "good poetry", or some terrible rap song as fantastic spoken poetry. It's kind of depressing.
My brother told me, that in his creative writing class in high school that he is just taking, the teacher asked the kids to bring in their favorite piece of writing - he said, besides himself, who took in a printing of the Sucking Stone sequence from Beckett's Molloy, everybody, to the chagrin of the teacher, brought in terrible lyrics from popular bands, or rappers.
It's kind of pathetic - is this what people think is good? Are students so uncultured that they can't fake themselves as being at least a little bit knowledgeable in literature, and grab the obvious stuff, like the opening of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, or some clippings from Robert Frost?
So, while I appreciate the art of songwriting, I feel that in a sense we shouldn't make exceptions on quality based on genre. We shouldn't say, for instance, it is good because it is a good song and has decent words, and therefore is good poetry. We should just say, "it is good poetry, and is also a great musical composition." When you think about it, how good a song is has nothing to do with its lyrics' quality as poetry. We can respect the two when they cross to provide a great form, but we shouldn't bend over and say "song lyrics are poetry". Ultimately, It's almost like calling those mediocre angstful teenage rant-verses an artform. Occasionally, you get a teenager with real talent, but ultimately, almost everything penned by teenagers is terrible, my verses included.
Now, had I been choosing what to bring to that class, well, I would have been torn between something arrogant like Milton's Lycidas, or Crane's Voyages, or even something simple, yet brilliant like Blake's Sick Rose - not because they are particularly my absolute favorites, but because reading them and being able to discuss them implies a sense of knowledge and understanding of how writing works - bringing something silly like Hit me Baby One More Time implies that you're taking the course because you can't quite handle anything challenging, and you know nothing about literature.
I feel relieved, JBI, that you mentioned the tradition of poetry, particularly Greco-Roman, sung rather than recited as most poets do today; I hoped to mention the same, but you beat me to the punch. Not only Homer's The Iliad or The Odyssey often presented themselves in a musical form, but most plays composed in similar times, such as those by Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, or Æschylus, had choral performers, functioning much as narrators or observers; it seems no surprise, in addition, that the nine muses' areas of specialties often overlapped in terms of different genres of music and poetry. Much closer to present times, even farther into the first and second generation Romantics, who highly revered the Greco-Romans and often alluded to them, most poetic works they composed in rhythms, Coleridge and Byron, in my opinion, seeming two of the most superior in that art.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I agree with you, these days one rarely sees a sufficient quality of poetry in music, particularly mainstream music; Cohen, Dylan, and many others appear as exceptions, but most of them have aged nearly to retirement, having gained so much experience in the music industry that their poetic songwriting likely seemed a large contributing factor as to why they have created music for so long. I suppose this seems one reason why the majority of music I personally listen to comes from the 1950's-1990's, if not instrumental. In rap, where I feel nowadays the 'c' is silent, as the popular saying of critics goes, the alleged art has deteriorated to the subjects only of glamour, fashioned by unqualitative, for-profit, appetitive "artists," supported even greater by capitalistic, starved-for-what-sells record industries. Rap began as beat poetry and slam poetry, and reading/hearing some of the lyrics from its roots of the 1960's-70's, highly influenced by jazz/blues artists and African culture, one cannot deny the obvious talent of restricting words to unique rhythms, the storytelling, and creation of "art for art's sake," as many of the first rappers began (and some ended) poor, in suffrage, and struggling with sociological ties within subcultures. That the art has now suffered through decades to the production of the equivalent of fecal matter through speakers and subwoofers saddens me, yet the deterioration of such creativity via desire for profit and appetitive means certainly happens.
Why combine music and poetry, regardless, I feel compelled to ask? Do some musicians lack the talent to produce good music alone, alluring to the ear, hence feel the need to write lyrics that give the music a further purpose? Do some poets feel the need to make their poetry that much more powerful by having its support by music? In the words of Stevie Wonder, one of the most prominent voices of Motown, "music is a world within itself with a language we all understand," yet the universal language of music, enveloped within its own abstract qualities, does not quite seem enough for some musicians/poets. One can interpret instrumental classical works by Chopin, let us say, one of his nocturnes, and feel relaxed, at ease, peaceful, but lyrics give music a message within that universal language in a shared language - art brought to words, why Kant considered poetry the most superior of all arts. In terms of musical qualities, without the lyrics, most Bob Dylan songs flow with much simplicity, with a few off-beat rhythms here and there with the strokes of his right hand, but that he, amid other songwriter/poets, writes such powerful words to those somewhat elementary rhythms, astounds the listener into his messages, whether metaphorical (as in "The Times Are A-Changin'") or more blunt (like in "Positively Fourth Street"), placing a restriction upon his words via rhythm, yet still proving the talent of conveying a beautiful message or story.
Honestly, I would feel overwhelmed if everyone wrote such poetic lyrics and simtultaneous good music, such as Dylan or Cohen, and the less-talented songwriters, not to mention names, in my opinion, only make such even more distinguished, furthermore giving them a purpose to not only write, but to write well. Many songwriters exist, "amateur" and "professional," and undoubtedly even more poets, but there must subsist the "haves" and "have-nots," so to speak.