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Musicians Who are Poets
I came across a very interesting article, that raises a question I had of MLT. Are they poets too? Perhaps only Mona and Lisa can answer this, but the lyrics in their songs are very poetic indeed, and this article state the following, to support my hypothesis that MLT are poets whether they realize it or not. 🙂
“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.”
“..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.”Here are 11 song writers/lyricists that this article considers are poets too.
John Lennon
Paul McCartney
Bob Dylan
Jim Morrison
Joni Mitchell
Leonard Cohen
Tupac Shakur
Patti Smith
Lou Reed
Kendrick Lamar
Gil Scott Heron
Kate BushHere is a link to the article that go into detail on each artist listed above explaining why they are considered poets. Link to article.
John Lennon
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. 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. 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. 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’.Lennon’s lyrics matured quickly as The Beatles soared to success. While the plea of ‘Please Please Me’ was as straightforward as they came, before long Lennon’s work was ambiguous and seemingly full of several meanings at once (‘A Day In The Life’, ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, ‘I Am The Walrus’), while his solo work found him capable of great vulnerability (‘Jealous Guy’), vitriol (‘Give Me Some Truth’) and mass communication through universal messages (‘Imagine’).
Paul McCartney
John Lennon’s songwriting partner was no lyrical slouch, either. 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. 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. We all understand the tug of nostalgia that comes from the lyrics of ‘Penny Lane’, despite never having been there.Equally, 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’). Later albums like Chaos And Creation In The Backyard showed a mature poet of rare sensitivity still making sense of the world around him. 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.
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15 Replies
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Poetic excerpt from MLT “Once Upon A Time”.
Click on image to enlarge
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Bonus – My attempt at MLT poetry, I posted previously.
Click image to enlarge:
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Good article Jung, … I’ve , a long time ago, thought of MLT as being poets and why their lyrics/songwriting resonates with me so much, they are Poetical Inspiration for me, and it’s funny that you mention of it now, I just never thought of posting about that connection of MLT/poetry before, or I eventually would have got around at some to post like you have here about it…. You beat me to it…. Lol.. You did offer up a good Poetical effort on your MLT poem??
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I grew up believing that a poem was defined as a composition written with a regular rhythm and rhyme scheme. I found that to be a really impressive skill that I strove to emulate.
Eventually an English teacher colleague of mine poo-pooed this apparently sad notion and seemed to take pride in his claim that poetry is a status accorded by the readers, not by the author, based on their subjective assessment of the quality of the writing. (He didn’t have an answer when I asked him if it necessarily followed that if you describe yourself as a poet then you must be a narcissist.)
So under that broad definition of poetry, then sure, anyone who writes anything can be considered a poet if a lot of people are impressed by it. I find the lyrics of many of MLT’s songs to be worthy of deep contemplation outside of any musical context, so I’m happy to call them poets in this sense. And since their phrasings are typically strong on rhythm and rhyme, they could be considered poets by my more objective definition as well.
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Yes, I agree, I believe Team MLT to be poets in their own rights, they have the definite gift of taking words and interweaving them into a song/story/poem, that evokes emotion, rhythm, etc.
Yes, while everyone indeed has a creative gift, for some it comes more natural, poetry is such, you may have the gift, but it’s the natural inclination /ability to rake words and interweave them to convey to express a sing/story, etc.
I’ve always been poetic for as long as I can recall, it comes natural to me. Yes, my dream is to publish a poetry book, and also to do up, perhaps a Volume 2 MLT Collection for Team MLT??
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David, I think much can be said for the traditional poetry structure that as you said which takes impressive skill to emulate. For me it seems to be like classical music in the form of a Sonata, Concerto, or Symphony that is done in 3 or 4 movements, but then that traditional classical music structure does not limit how music can be created today. The same I guess is true for poetry.
When it comes to poetry, I remember in high school English class, they tried to instill in us appreciation for poetry. It was the hardest course for me. It was quite amazing just how much meaning and information the poets could express in just a few words or phrases of a poem with all the symbolism, imagery, figurative language (hidden meanings), simile, metaphors…etc going on. Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a few poetic words or phrases could solicit pages an essay to express the meaning behind it. Music/songs are the same way, in a song so much feeling and emotions can be expressed that words just can’t. That’s what makes art so special, whether poetry, painting, or music, it can express the inexpressible.
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Thanks Jacki, and you should publish your poetry, and maybe even include some of your hand drawn sketching along with it in the book.
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Hi Jung;
I believe the list should have Paul Simon added to it. Mike
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Hi Mike, yes that list of poetic song writers is hardly comprehensive. Paul Simon would be high on the list as well as Elton John, Donovan….etc
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Chuck Berry was not only considered the King of Rock and Roll by many, and admired for his brilliant guitar work, he was also the first great poet laureate of Rock and Roll too!
“I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back / And started walkin’ toward a coffee-colored Cadillac,” Berry wrote in “Nadine,”
“motorvatin’ over the hill” when he “saw Maybellene in a Coupe de Ville”
“There she is again / standing over by the record machine, …Looking like a model on the cover of a magazine, / she’s too cute to be a minute over seventeen.” Barry wrote in Little Queenie
In this excellent article about Chuck Berry they say:
“Berry consistently avoided cliches and stock images or situations. He was investing layers of emotion and meaning into songs long before Bob Dylan came along and started people talking about rock ’n’ roll as an art form.” “Berry loved the sound of words, and the power in being able to string together the right combination to pull listeners into his world.”
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In this interview, the poetic side of John Lennon is implied in what John says about “Across the Universe” that he wrote. One of John’s favourite Beatles songs is “Across The Universe” because it had “…good poetry”. He certainly appreciated poetic lyrics that could stand by itself apart from the melody.
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The refrain “Jai Guru Deva Om” is a mantra intended to lull the mind into a higher consciousness. The words are in Sanskrit, and they mean “I give thanks to Guru Dev,” who was the teacher of The Maharishi.
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This is probably why, songwriting idea appeals to me, lyric wise, not the actual music tech aspects of notes, etc with wording, just the plain notion of hearing a the rhythm of a song, becoming inspired in letting the words come to me poetically…that is a natural direction for me to think, and hopefully, will write words to a song, ??????
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