In my opinion, rock music has four literary giants (Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen) and then a whole bunch of other excellent writer. I’m covering ten more of them on this list, and but essentially it’s an excuse to throw ten excellent lyricists together and quote a favourite line from each. You can read part one and part two here,
Thanks to readers for all your excellent suggestions – I still couldn’t fit John Lennon on this list, so it looks like there’ll need to be a part four sometime.
Here are ten more excellent lyricists, in alphabetical order:
Ray Davies
The Kinks’ Ray Davies brought normalcy to rock lyrics in the 1960s. While his contemporaries were straying into psychedelia, Davies wrote vignettes about everyday life in England and pined for the simpler life of the past in ‘Village Green Preservation Society’.
Terry meets Julie
The Kinks, Waterloo Sunset
Waterloo station
Every Friday night
But I am so lazy, don’t want to wander
I stay at home at night
Richey Edwards
When he disappeared in 1995, Manic Street Preacher Richie Edwards had perhaps not reached his full potential as a lyricist. He could write articulately about both politics and his own personal pain, peaking on the 1994 masterpiece The Holy Bible.
Images of perfection, suntan and napalm
Manic Street Preachers, Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart
Grenada – Haiti – Poland – Nicaragua
Who shall we choose for our morality
I’m thinking right now of Hollywood tragedy
Peter Gabriel
Whether he’s embarking on flights of fancy in his early prog work with Genesis, or writing socially conscious and personal words in his solo career, Peter Gabriel‘s wordplay is consistently fascinating. Gabriel almost left Genesis before The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway when Exorcist director William Friedkin invited him to write a screenplay.
Each empty snakelike body floats,
Genesis, The Lamia
Silent sorrow in empty boats.
A sickly sourness fills the room,
The bitter harvest of a dying bloom.
Don Henley
Henley’s early work in the Eagles suffers from collaborating in a writing team with Glenn “Chug All Night” Frey. When Henley took control over most of the band’s words around the time of Hotel California, his lyrics started picking away at the dark underbelly of the American dream on songs like ‘The Last Resort’. This continued with his solo career, on notable songs like ‘The Boys of Summer’ and ‘The End of the Innocence’.
O’ beautiful, for spacious skies
Don Henley, The End of the Innocence
But now those skies are threatening
They’re beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And they’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie
Kendrick Lamar
Compton’s Kendrick Lamar raised eyebrows when he won a Pulitzer Prize for music in 2018 – the first non-classical or jazz artist to earn the award. He’s a contender for the most significant musical artist of the last decade, releasing a string of critically acclaimed rap records.
This plot is bigger than me, it’s generational hatred
Kendrick Lamar, The Blacker the Berry
It’s genocism, it’s grimy, little justification
I’m African-American, I’m African
I’m black as the heart of a fuckin’ Aryan
I’m black as the name of Tyrone and Darius
Laura Nyro
New York’s Laura Nyro was never a big selling artist, and she’s better known as the writer of 1960s hits for like ‘Eli’s Coming’ and ‘Stoned Soul Picnic’. Her albums from the late 1960s and early 1970s are gorgeous, however – her words and music are impressionistic and unique.
Five boys standing
Laura Nyro, The Beads of Sweat
On the banks of the river
Waiting for the virgin snow
Searching for a miracle
A pearl in an oyster
And we all looked out to God
Although He is the colour of the wind
Listen to the wailing
Of the rain in the river
John Prine
The late John Prine released a lot of great country-folk records, but it’s difficult to go past his stone-cold classic 1971 debut. Prine was extremely empathetic, able to write from the perspective of an old person in ‘Hello In There’ and a heroin addict addled by the Vietnam War in ‘Sam Stone’.
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes
John Prine, Sam Stone
Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios
Paul Simon
Paul Simon‘s songs contain phrases that have passed from his pen into the common vernacular – “slip sliding away”, “bridge over troubled water”. Simon’s early lyrics in Simon and Garfunkel are sometimes overly pretentious (“And you read your Emily Dickinson/And I my Robert Frost/And we note our place with book markers/That measure what we’ve lost” is an awkward early couplet), but by the late 1960s he’d developed his own voice. In the 1980s, with the phenomenally successful Graceland, Simon’s lyric writing had developed into a freer, impressionistic style.
And sometimes when I’m falling, flying
Paul Simon, Graceland
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
“Whoa, so this is what she means”
She means we’re bouncing into Graceland
Mark E. Smith
The Fall’s Mark Edward Smith was a distinctive vocalist, delivering his words in a drunken Mancunian slur and ending most lines with a derisive “-uh”. But there were gems of poetic insight among his rambling – he was a prolific writer who recorded his words in notebooks, ready to be shaped into Fall lyrics.
There are twelve people in the world
The Fall, The Classical
The rest are paste
Taylor Swift
Country and pop star Taylor Swift is often an object of derision among older music fans. But she’s an excellent lyricist, peppering her words with specific details that stick in the listener’s mind. Swift has stated that if she wasn’t a songwriter, she would have chosen a career writing advertising slogans.
But you keep my old scarf from that very first week
Taylor Swift, All Too Well
‘Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me
You can’t get rid of it, ’cause you remember it all too well
Any more suggestions for a part four?
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Nick Drake is excellent too,
Yeah, I do like his gentle pastoral imagery – I should consider him for part 4.
I’ve always thought that Jim Croce was a good lyracist.
I only know the two big hits, but Leroy Brown has some great lines!
I’ve been meaning to give Prine’s music a try.
To me, Alanis Morissette is a talented (and sincere) lyricist.
Prine’s debut is super good – you could easily make a case that it’s the best record from that early 1970s singer-songwriter era.
I have to admit when it comes to songs, I generally pay much more attention to the music than the lyrics. Usually, it’s stuff like guitar riffs, bass lines, or great solos that attract me. I’m also really into vocals. While I realize vocals are typically connected to lyrics, primarily, it’s melody and features like harmony singing that grab me. If on top of all a song has great lyrics, even better!
Following are five spontaneous examples of lyrics I find cool:
– The Inner Light (The Beatles/George Harrison): …Without going out of your door/You can know all things on earth/Without looking out of your window/You could know the ways of heaven/The farther one travels/The less one knows/The less one really knows…
– Have a Cigar (Pink Floyd/Roger Waters):..I’ve always had a deep respect and I mean that most sincere/The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think/Oh, by the way, which one’s Pink?…
– Allentown (Billy Joel):..Well we’re waiting here in Allentown/For the Pennsylvania we never found/For the promises our teachers gave/If we worked hard/If we behaved…
– Sunday Morning Coming Down (Kris Kristofferson):…Well, I woke up Sunday morning/ With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt/And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad/So I had one more for dessert…
– Drowning on Dry Land/Fish Soup (Manfred Mann’s Earth Band/ Chris Slate, Dave Flett & Manfred Mann): Sitting in a silent room/The walls around me screaming/Rely on nothing wait on no one/Standing between light and dark/Watch the mirrors gleaming/Shine on nothing showing no one…
Thanks for the thorough response!
I couldn’t quite squeeze Waters in to part 3 – maybe part 4.
Harrison has some good lines for sure – I like the opening to Taxman – “Let me tell you how it will be/There’s one for you, nineteen for me.”
Joel has some lines in his songs that I really hate, but Allentown is really good. I barely know Kristofferson, but that’s an iconic line.
Of course, I realize while you discussed lyricists overall, I just pulled some random lines I dig. I agree, btw, “Taxman” is another great George Harrison song.
As for Kristofferson, I know very little about his music, but I’ve really come to love this particular song. I think it’s great cinematic story-telling.
Last but not least, I hear you regarding Billy Joel. “Allentown” is perhaps an exception, though I also like “Goodnight Saigon”.
I wasn’t too scientific either – if I was doing it properly I would have made a big ranked list at the start and fed it out methodically. Although I think it’s fine to just have a top 4 and a whole bunch of runner ups.
Even Goodnight Saigon has some awkward lines. I think it’s great overall, but lines like “They heard the hum of the motors
They counted the rotors
And waited for us to arrive” are pretty clunky. I heard that, unlike most writers, Joel writes the music first and then makes lyrics to fit.
Good list…I’m glad to see John Prine.
I thought about a name the last time you did this but he may not fit with what you are looking for… Hank Williams. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry is a great example.
Yeah, I need to get acquainted with Williams sometime. Lyrics are generally very important in country IMO.
You have some of the worse lyrics in country songs also but some like Williams…are good.
I feel like country pushes lyrics to the forefront – the music’s often simple, so lyrics take centre stage.
Yea because the music is often strumming more than busy…I see what you are saying. Folk music can work the same also.
Lyrics in general mean very little to me. Even a good lyric doesn’t really add anything to somebody’s music. However, a good-natured lyric that describes an amusing person or an amusing place or an amusing situation can do wonders for somebody’s music. Your mentioning of Ray Davies made me think about this. And the mid-sixties Kinks and Beatles are a good example of what I mean. The way they sketch out a certain place or a certain time that sets your imagination going so that you actually develop a picture in your head of what these people and places actually look like. It’s usually kind of sentimental, but it leaves you with a really good feeling. A lot of 60s music was like this where it just gave you enough information for you to picture it in your mind. That’s probably my favorite kind of lyrics.
Lots of songs in the sixties were two minutes, right? Kind of an art-form, squeezing a tantalising narrative into that short space.
Wot, no Syd?!
I’d put in Roger before Syd as a lyricist – I don’t know who my favourite psychedelic lyricist is – maybe Lennon?
Whaaaaaat?! Now you’ve lost me completely… Syd should be in your long list just based on ‘Piper’ and his two solo albums alone.
Which other Jim Croce song do you know?
Time in a Bottle! I’ve never actually got into Croce – I think my dad had an LP around (which is unusual as he barely had any pop/rock albums), but never played it.
That is a good song too and he had quite a few other good ones. “I Got a Name” is my favourite.
Paul Simon would be further up my list, if only for I Do It For Your Love from Still Crazy. It’s a love song about a young couple getting together in the city: no money, crummy apartment, the story of many of our lives. Then, having built this relationship up for us over a few evocative verses, he kills it off in three lines:
The sting of reason, the splash of tears
The northern and the southern hemispheres
Love emerges and it disappears.
Those are good lines – I’m not so fond of
I like to sleep with the window open
And you keep the window closed
So goodbye, goodbye, goodbye…
from the same album, although the banality of the lyrics does kind of work.
I’ll jump on the Ray, Peter and John train any day. If I had to run out of a burning house and grab one song it would probably be ‘Waterloo Sunset’ (today anyways).
I used to have a local record shop named Waterloo Sunset (in the suburb of Waterloo). I probably didn’t support it enough – I remember buying The Velvet Underground’s second album, Spirit’s second album, and an Elton John record (maybe Honky Chateau?), all in one day.
Very cool. Funny how we remember certain things like that. No particular reason they just stick out in my memory bank. That’s he one Elton album i really like.
It’s my favourite Elton record – he got rid of the strings, but hadn’t got too glam/camp yet.
Yeah. I lost track of old Elton way back when. But Honky is a good record.
By the end of the 60s songs were more like 3 minutes long or more. Especially album tracks.
Nice calls on Laura Nyro & John Prine especially – both new to me within the past couple of years & both so terrific
I’ve just started checking out Nyro’s mid-1970s records, since I liked the earlier ones so much.
I know it seems a little cliché, but maybe he’s cliché for a reason. I’m suggesting adding Conor Oberst to a future list. There’s a reason Rolling Stone once referred to him as the “Bob Dylan of our generation.” If you’re familiar, I know suggestions aren’t necessary, but if you aren’t, check out Bright Eyes’s “Classic Cars” or “No Lies, Just Love” or “Bowl of Oranges” or literally anything off the “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” album.
Thanks for writing in!
Basically my experience with Oberst is that I heard some songs back when he was huge (around 2005) but I didn’t really like his voice and didn’t listen further. But I really like that album he made with Phoebe Bridgers last year, so I’ve been meaning to explore him further. Sounds like I should check out I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.
To think of all the genuinely talented lyricists that weren’t included, yet Taylor Swift was. Good lord. Could have at least mentioned her first so I would’ve known not to waste my time reading it.
So you think Taylor Swift is a better Lyricist than Gord Downie??
I know music is subjective art but that’s an insane proposition
Three lists. No Morrissey. Sigh. Don Henley and Taylor Swift. No Morrissey.
Here’s the lyrics to the Smiths “The Queen Is Dead”
Farewell… to this land’s cheerless marshes
Hemmed in like a boar between archers1
Her very Lowness with her head in a sling
I’m truely sorry but it sounds like a wonderful thing
“I say, Charles, don’t you ever crave
To appear on the front of the Daily Mail
Dressed in your Mother’s bridal veil?”
And so I checked all the registered historical facts
And I was shocked into shame to discover
How I’m the 18th pale descendent
Of some old queen or other
Oh has the world changed or have I changed?
Oh has the world changed or have I changed?
As some 9-year old tough who peddles drugs
(I swear to God, I swear)
I never even knew what drugs were
So I broke into the Palace
With a sponge and a rusty spanner
She said: “Eh, I know and you cannot sing!”
I said: “That’s nothing, you should hear me play piano!”
We can go for a walk where it’s quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
But when you’re tied to your Mother’s apron
No one talks about castration
We can go for a walk where it’s quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
Like Love and Law and Poverty
These are the things that kill me
We can go for a walk where it’s quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
But the rain that flattens my hair
These are the things that kill me
Pass the Pub that saps your body
And the church who’ll snatch your money
The Queen is dead, boys
And it’s so lonely on a limb
Pass the Pub that wrecks your body
And the church – all they want is your money
The Queen is dead, boys
And it’s so lonely on a limb
Life is very long when you’re lonely
Life is very long when you’re lonely
Life is very long when you’re lonely
Life is very long when you’re lonely
Morrissey is very witty but I struggle with him in self-pitying mode. I don’t like songs like ‘Never Had No One Ever’.
When you think he’s in self pity mode, he’s probably not. He has always been about turning the love song on its head. He writes with a strong sense of irony, which Americans struggle with. The Brits are the masters of irony. The reputation Morrissey has for being depressing or self pitying comes from people who don’t understand his music. I can find some humor in nearly every Smith’s song. Part of Morrissey’s brilliance is that what appears on the surface is rarely what you find if you dig a little deeper.
I really dug this list of 30, though to me there’s one glaring omission. I’d have had many of these (Dylan, Prine, Browne, Costello, Joni etc.) Those are pretty universal i think. I loved your inclusion of Gillian Welch. Incredibly underrated, criminally so I’d say. I’d have included nick Drake and Kristen Hirsh of Throwing Muses. My biggest gripe is no Pete Townshend!! He’s probably my #1. “Can’t Explain” may be the best 2 and a half minute song of all time with accessible but not pandering lyrics of teenage angst. “My Generation” is sheer perfection. “Substitute”, “pictures of Lily” are perfect lyrics too!! I’m biased as I am a Who superfan but Pete words things in simple yet profound ways that no other artist ever has!!
Townshend is a good point as a lyricist actually – Quadrophenia is a very interesting concept. I’m not the biggest Who fan, although I should cover them sometime.
Hmmm…
No mention of Bruce Cockburn….
I do know him a little (just have a greatest hits). Didn’t really think about him for this list, but he is good.