Song lyrics that can stand alone as poetry

[bedbugboy54]

I like Under the Bridge By Red Hot Chili Peppers, although I think some of it could be shaved out if the music isn't present.
Twilight Zone is also awesome.

Here's Twilight Zone:
Somewhere in a lonely hotel room
There's a guy starting to realize
That eternal fate has turned it's back on him
It's two A.M.

It's two A.M. the fear has gone
I'm sitting here waitin' the gun still warm
Maybe my connection is tired of takin' chances

Yeah, there's a storm on the loose, sirens in my head
Wrapped up in silence all circuits are dead
Cannot decode, my whole life spins into a frenzy

Help, I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?

Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone


I'm falling down the spiral destination unknown
Double crossed messenger all alone
Can't get no connection, can't get through
Where are you?

Well the night weighs heavy on his guilty mind
This far from the borderline
When the hitman comes
He knows damn well he has been cheated

And he says, "Help, I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"

Here's one part of under the bridge I think is great:

I drive on her streets
'Cause she's my companion
I walk through her hills
'Cause she knows who I am
She sees my good deeds
And she kisses me windy
I never worry
Now that is a lie

[fajfall]

I can't find a name other than 'Botany Bay' of this convict ballad. There's a very haunting reading of the last stanza on YouTube under Botany Bay:

Botany Bay 2

Come all young men of learning, a warning take by me
I'll have you quit night walking and shun bad company
I'll have you quit night walking, or else you'll rue the day
And you will be transported and be sent to Botany Bay


I was brought up in London town, a place I know full well
Brought up by honest parents, the truth to you I'll tell
Brought up by honest parents, who loved me tenderly
Till I became a roving blade, to prove my destiny


My character was taken and I was sent to goal
My parents tried to clear me, but nothing would prevail
Twas at our Rutland sessions the Judge to me did say
The jury's found you guilty, you must go to Botany Bay


To see my poor old father, as he stood at the bar
Likewise my dear old mother, her old gray locks she tore
And in tearing of her old gray locks these words to me she did say
O son ! O son ! What hast thou done, Thou art bound for Botany Bay
Notes

[DATo]

Houses

by

Judy Collins

POSTER'S NOTE: The song itself is both poetic and hauntingly beautiful. Written and sung by Miss Collins as a tribute to her deceased son.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3C6FJU3R1k

You have many houses, one for every season
Mountains in your windows, violets in your hands
Through your English meadows your blue-eyed horses wander
You're in Colorado for the Spring

When the Winter finds you, you fly to where it's summer
Rooms that face the ocean, moonlight on your bed
Mermaids swift as dolphins paint the air with diamonds
You are like a seagull as you sail

Why do you fly bright feathered sometimes in my dreams?
The shadows of your wings fall over my face
I can feel no air, I can find no peace
Brides in black ribbons, witches in white
Fly in through windows, fly out through the night

Why do I think I'm dying sometimes in my dreams
I see myself a child running through the trees
Looking everywhere crawling on my knees
Searching for myself, looking for my life
I cannot see the leaves, I cannot see the light

Then I see you walking just beyond the forest
Walking very quickly, walking by yourself
Your shoes are silver, your coat is made of velvet
Your eyes are shining, your voice is sweet and clear
"Come on" you say "come with me, I'm going to the castle"

All the bells are ringing, the weddings have begun
But I can only stand here-I cannot move to follow
I'm burning in the shadows I'm freezing in the sun

There are people you knew living in your houses
People from your childhood who remember how you were
You were always flying, nightingale of sorrow
Singing bird, with rainbows on your wings

[Danik 2016]

The House of the Rising Sun! Haunting!!
https://www.google.com.br/search?q=t...GYrAwATcupL4BA

[ennison]

There is an intimate connection between songs and poetry. But just as it's easy to create crap poetry it is just as easy to create garbage songs. The lower end of the pop factory produces tat. But many singer songwriters are genuinely poetic. It is a particular talent to write a poem that is also musically satisfying. Many effective simple songs are effective simple poems. I remember the late Iain C Smith sneering at those Gaelic song writers who produced material that their communities enjoyed. He himself could do nothing like that. Snobbery of his type is too common among the supposed stars of literature. It would be too boring for me to try to list the huge number of songs that I consider poetry but the number is enormous. I consider the field called poetry to be wide and varied.
In this respect I share some of the attitudes of Auden. I would recommend his pre-war poetry anthologies as examples of democratic taste.

[YesNo]

I remember reading a book about writing song lyrics where the author (I forget who) wrote that lyricists should not consider themselves poets. It amazed me that neither songwriters nor poets thought song lyrics were poetry. That didn't make sense and as a reaction to defend my common sense I would insist that the opposite was true.

Over the years I realized that for most people song lyrics are not just poetry, they are the best poetry.

One song I listened to more closely earlier this year, paying attention to the lyrics, was the Bee Gee's "Heartbreaker": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VCuCm6XKeA Although I found it moving when it first appeared, my remembrance of it was as a sentimental love song. Why was it so popular? What moved me at the time and even today? Clearly the line, "My love is stronger than the universe", is what made the song successful, but that is not the sort of thing a girl would so defiantly say to her distant lover which made me wonder just what were we hearing when we heard those words?

[JCamilo]

Maybe, just maybe, the suggestion that lyricists should not consider themselves poets is only because they are writting something that must work when sung first, while the poet must consider what will be read first. A matter of focus, rather than a matter if the lyrics can be read or have poetical elements. (Just as a poem have musical elements and is not exactly music).

[desiresjab]

Hardly any songs, especially modern ones, stand up as poetry, as clearly evinced in this thread. As stand alone works of poetry, the rhymes of songs sound and read with a juvenile feel and content. Only when the music is added can they take you over.

[kingdavid]

Hardly any songs, especially modern ones, stand up as poetry, as clearly evinced in this thread. As stand alone works of poetry, the rhymes of songs sound and read with a juvenile feel and content. Only when the music is added can they take you over.

For the most part I agree. Especially Top 40 music, it has some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard; they essentially use the voice as an instrument rather than means of conveyance. But I wouldn't take modern lyrics out of considering them poetry though. If you look for it there is some gorgeous poetry in song writing, especially modern. You may have to go a wee bit under the radar to find it, but it is there. The work of Connor Oberst comes to mind. Honest lyrics make great poetry.

[mynguyen]

I think of poetry transformed into a song is both an artistic process.

[Agliomby]

Me and Bobby McGee
Hallelujah
California Dreaming

And many more must compare more than favourably with any contemporary "poetry". I think modern ( that is, post war) poetry has lost its way, written for the author to be admired, rather than to please an audience.

[Agliomby]

Lyrics, or poetry, are not inevitably made worse by being set to music.

[YesNo]

Me and Bobby McGee
Hallelujah
California Dreaming

And many more must compare more than favourably with any contemporary "poetry". I think modern ( that is, post war) poetry has lost its way, written for the author to be admired, rather than to please an audience.

Good selections. A poet's goal should be to please a wide audience. The audience, unfortunately, for poetry today (not songs) is restricted to a very small number of people whom one should probably not want to please.

[EmptySeraph]

Maybe, just maybe, the suggestion that lyricists should not consider themselves poets is only because they are writting something that must work when sung first, while the poet must consider what will be read first. A matter of focus, rather than a matter if the lyrics can be read or have poetical elements. (Just as a poem have musical elements and is not exactly music).

Celan's ''Todesfuge'' didn't get its title by chance. Poetry ought to be read aloud, for it strongly links to musicality, or it should anyway. As Verlaine said:

De la musique avant toute chose,
Et pour cela préfère l'Impair
Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air,
Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.

However, Celan is quite a special case, for he actually tried to destroy exactly that musicality, to expel it from his poetry, to isolate it from outer beauty, from the German expresionism (which is still sensible in his poems from Der Sand aus den Urnen) and neoromanticism (from Rilke, Stefan George etc.) that possessed a gentle rhytm and a smooth, facile rhyme. But Celan wanted a poem that could no longer be identified with musicality and exterior acustics, and hence the metamorphosis the poem suffers; witness, par example, his Engführung, perhaps the piece where the Verwerfung is most conspicuous. This process of destroying the usual shape of the poem is a form of, as Martine Broda put it, celaniser la langue.
So, you can make poetry without music, but you'll still have to start with a musical form and destroy it as you advance.

Compare the last stanza of Todesfuge:

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

with the last from Engführung:

(– – taggrau,
der
Grundwasserspuren –


Verbracht
ins Gelände
mit
der untrüglichen
Spur:

Gras.
Gras,
auseinandergeschrieben.)

It's conceptually the same poem. But the shape is completely massacred, it's emptied of any musicality that could resemble anything from the exterior universe. What led to this radical change? Roughly fifteen years of lyrical maceration, of denying the music...

[YesNo]

But Celan wanted a poem that could no longer be identified with musicality and exterior acustics, and hence the metamorphosis the poem suffers; witness, par example, his Engführung, perhaps the piece where the Verwerfung is most conspicuous. This process of destroying the usual shape of the poem is a form of, as Martine Broda put it, celaniser la langue.

I think words require sound even when one says them to oneself. It is the sound that brings out the meaning for a member of our species. There is no "shape of the poem" to destroy.

It's conceptually the same poem. But the shape is completely massacred, it's emptied of any musicality that could resemble anything from the exterior universe. What led to this radical change? Roughly fifteen years of lyrical maceration, of denying the music...

What does it mean for two poems to be "conceptually the same poem"?