The older I get, and the more my knowledge of poetry has expanded, the more turned off I am by the doggerel that most popular-music lyrics are. My rock listening is increasingly limited to shoegaze, a genre where the vocals get so submerged in the mix, you can’t even make out the words and nothing hinders you from enjoying the pure sound.
I really appreciate your recommending me something. Often people might just bristle that I said anything negative about popular music (even if it’s purely a matter of my personal taste) and not even try to help me find something I might like.
That said, in your song, as remarkable as the first verse is (and it’s a great tune), the second verse is too close to pop tropes for me. FWIW, my favourite popular-music lyricist is Scott Walker, who I feel is fully a match for the 20th-century poets I enjoy, e.g. [0] [1]. Would love to find other similar lyricists.
Wow those are incredible lyrics. Thank you for the recommendation. I'll be checking him out
I will say if 'pop' music has failed you, and you're largely into instrumental music, I can't recommend Dead can Dance enough. Specifically Serpent's egg if you never listened to them. They're largely 'instrumental'(the singer made up her own language). The only song with defining lyrics on the album I also think are super beautiful:
I’m well familiar with DCD. I’m also aware that Brendan Perry’s lyrics of the 1980s are faux-profound and were created in a cloud of pot smoke. I suspect even he was eventually embarrassed at what he had written as a young man, as that material disappeared from concerts and he adapted a different lyrical approach for later efforts.
