who are/were the best song writers (in terms of lyrics only) in music?

and leonard cohen

I wouldn't pick either of them

so pick others

Chuck Berry

deeznuts

Jake Thackray

kris kristofferson.

Lyrics only? Craig Finn; Bruce Springsteen; Neil Young; Sam Beam (Iron & Wine). I like M.I.A.'s lyrics a lot, but I guess it's a little too early in her career to say. Did Billie Holliday write her lyrics, did she? Sorry -- stupid question, I guess. If she did, then her.

My favorites: David Berman, David Byrne, Sun Ra.

Daniel otm.
let me add our dear buddy John Darnieele

Neil young has lots of embarassing lyrics moments though

All the best lyricists have embarassing moments

the question is how much

Getting stuff right all the time is boring

jeez, i dunno. name someone that's done it

like, apart from kris kristofferson.

Well, I don't know, I suppose poker-up-yer-arse sort of writers like Elvis Costello don't make too many mistakes

half of Costello career is a mistake

This is about lyrics

if that's getting it right all the time then i'm on your side xp

Hey old man take a look at your life I'm A LOT LIKE YOU.

my life*

Anyway - Neil Young is pretty cool. :)

Also, Joni Mitchell has some knock-out lyrics.

I never take much notice of Neil Young's lyrics, for some reason

maybe because you have "youa re like a hurricane,theres calm in your eye" in yr head

In some moods, Mark E. Smith impresses me more than Dylan even.

After him: Ray Davies, Bertold Brecht, Joe Strummer, Cole Porter. My favorite recent guy is Erin Sullivan of the A Frames.

Ice T and Jello Biafra in their prime totally opened my mind with what a lyric could do. "It's okay to run out of butter in Zambia. Just smear squashed caterpillars on your toast." fits a lot of different emotions into two lines.

Billy Holiday didn't write much other than God Bless the Child, IRRC.

I always like this Neil Young lyric:

Well, we live in a trailer
at the edge of town
You never see us
'cause we don't come around.
We got twenty five rifles
just to keep
the population down.

Oh and I totally forgot Mark E Smith. Amazing.

David Byrne's sound sorta sharpish, oftenish.

Mary Margaret O'Hara.

And for all I (don't) kno', Wimme's joik's could be verily imaginative too. (The few translations I've seen suggest so)

Beefheart

overrated:
nick cave,lou reed

Someone younger (just to break up the canon monotone); Katherine Edwards. A little Young-esque sometimes, but really great.

Also, Buffy Sainte-Marie has some amazing lyrics.

Randy Newman never ceases to amaze me.

... although I think his music is necessary to truly appreciate his stories. Guess you could say that for a lot of songwriters.

let me add our dear buddy John Darnieele

Cosign.

Robert Hunter. Not a lot of the hippie-ish sentimentality most people unfamiliar with the Dead would expect.

Mordy, do you mean Kathleen Edwards?

Yes! Kathleen. Not Katherine.

I don't know why I misspelled it. Her name is running across my FoxyTunes at the moment.

Kathleen Edwards

She's good, I'm starting to like her a lot. You're right that she resembles Neil. Canadians!

I wonder how many of my favorite lyricists are Canadian. Joni, Neil, Kathleen, just for starters. It must be because of those mandatory Lyrics 101 requirements they've got.

i tend to favor lyricists who are really wordy and/or "clever" as opposed to like baring their souls or emotions or whatever.
the masters of this are like paul simon, david byrne and elvis costello. everything on "graceland" is blowing my mind lyrically right now, his lyrics are so dense and wordy but still come off as breezy and conversational. byrne is different, his lyrics can be so sparse and repetitive but i think he has the best ideas and concepts

Van Dyke Parks? Nina Nastasia? Neil Tennant?

Seconded on Byrne

everything on "graceland" is blowing my mind lyrically right now, his lyrics are so dense and wordy but still come off as breezy and conversational

"You Can Call Me Al" has like 8 billion words, right?!

Kevin Coyne

not really

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Bonedigger Bonedigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly Beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don't find this stuff amusing anymore
If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al

A man walks down the street
He says why am I short of attention
Got a short little span of attention
And wo my nights are so long
Where's my wife and family
What if I die here
Who'll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations

If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al
Call me Al

A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World
Maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound
The sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al
Call me Al

all i listen to these days is "graceland" and unwound's "repetition"

Noel Coward S/D [Started by Johnney B (Johnney B), last updated 1 minute ago] 1 new answer

The songs on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme I remember were pretty verbose. Esp the most wonderful Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine.

Arthur Lee for sure

Tom Waits is up there, too.

Hard to disagree with most of these. Just beat me to Tom Waits! Feel the need to mention Jason Molina as well.

GhostFace, too! Sorry for the piecemeal responses.

Oh n/a, I just mean per line, it seems wordy!

Also, Bill Callahan.

Seconding:

Nick Cave, Lou Reed, Arthur Lee, Van Dyke Parks

Also:

Wu-Tang, Mobb Deep

A few more: Mark Kozelek and Morrissey (not for his recent stuff, tho).

Graham Smith, Ron Mael, David Berman, Scott Miller, Momus

Kozelek is fantastic at times but i feel like a schoolteacher giving out a progress report when looking at his entire body of work. "Mark would be one of our top students if he applied himself more." The whole AC/DC covers record, blegh.

I don't know that I've ever heard a Morrissey line that really did anything for me.

andy partridge, pete hammill and some fella called tim smith immediately spring to mind

The whole AC/DC covers record, blegh.

Well, yes, but he didn't write the lyrics on that one, did he?

Stephin Merritt

I don't know that I've ever heard a Morrissey line that really did anything for me.

Vive la Différence. Seriously, Morrissey's mope-y, depressed lyrics really connected with me when I was in college.

i don't know if morrissey's a good full-song lyricist but he's got some pretty great one-liners

that dude from volcano! (aaron with) is a fucking talented lyricist as well

The whole AC/DC covers record, blegh.

Bon Scott then, for the win

If only for Crabsody in Blue.

btw this thread question was asked really awkwardly

Bernard Sumner.

stephin merritt is a pretty awful lyricist, sorry

dude from the national is probably my favorite current lyricist

Jello Biafra
Joe Strummer
Morrissey
Gregg Graffin and Mr. Brett (admit it)
Springsteen (cf. 'Nebraska')

rennie sparks, nina nastasia

The whole AC/DC covers record, blegh.

Well, yes, but he didn't write the lyrics on that one, did he?

-- Daniel, Esq., Thursday, June 5, 2008 7:09 PM (41 minutes ago)

You're right, and obviously my qualms with that album aren't really relevant to this thread. i was talking about him with a friend just last night & his name just sort of sent me back to that convo in my head.

Also, is it too early in his career to mention Yoni Wolf? i love Why?'s lyrics. And i love that punctuation.

I don't pay too much attention to lyrics unless the singer makes me care about them, which is why I owe Bernard Sumner (whom I genuinely admire) a ton of thanks.

No one's mentioned Robert Forster, Grant McLennan, Neil Tennant, Prince, Sam Cooke, Rakim, and Ghostface.

Um, I mentioned Neil Tennant.

Actually.

Geddit?

Van Dyke Parks? Nina Nastasia? Neil Tennant?

-- I know, right?, Thursday, June 5, 2008 4:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

GhostFace, too! Sorry for the piecemeal responses.

-- Daniel, Esq., Thursday, June 5, 2008 5:10 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

New Order is my favorite band, and <3 Sumner, but surely you can only celebrate their lyrics as tossed off and flip or not really relevant to their greatness.

I mean:

i'm doing my best to confound you
your behavior is so volatile
not even a zoo would impound you
don't look at me with your quizzical smile

it's not about new order's lyrics as a whole and more about the music and how it ties into specific lines that come to the fore imo

you read their stuff on paper and it doesn't seem mind blowing

For Rent alone, almost everything about that song is implied but you get this perfect peephole into the entire mechanics of the relationship xxp

I read lyrics better than threads, alas.

Leonard Cohen, John Darnielle, Jeff Mangum, Marty Donald.

Van Dyke Parks for this:

Far beyond the blue mist enveloped lawn the blanketed night comes on. The champagne is dead and gone. The forest around sensitive sound forest primeval. Through the panes cloud buttermilk war remains and twisted cross war refrains lunatic so high moon I said high moon lighted high moon eye to my moon.

For whoever was complaining about the wordiness of Paul Simon, get a load of this, it's ridiculous. The way he shoves every gleaming detail into each crammed sentence. each song is like a blundering contraption made from odds and ends.

Also Linda Perhacs for the lyrics to Parallelograms.

Which is the most perfect opposite.

The line from Stormy Weather too "she photographs me in a bed of flowers"

Amy Rigby, Rosanne Cash.

i agree with you omar, it's about the music as a whole, which is why i can't believe anyone would say they loved new order's lyrics as a thing apart from the music

Per no less an authority than Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson.

Year-in, year-out, I always enjoy Rhett Miller's lyrics. Over-precious sometimes, over-precocious others, but there's something to giggle over or to chew on in almost every song. And he doesn't take himself anywhere near as seriously as Stephin Merritt or Aimee Mann, both of whom are like that, too.

Jay-Z often knocks me out. He has moments of real greatness. Lots of them.

I'm not so sure about anymore, but Freedy Johnston was a pretty great lyricist for the first decade or so of his career.

And whoever wrote the lyrics to my favorite lyric ever, the Amazing Rhythm Aces' "Third-Rate Romance, Low-Rent Rendezvous".

Townes Van Zandt!

Oh. One more undeniable. (Actually, I agree with about 75% of the people that have been named so far.)

Stephen Sondheim. The lyrics he wrote early in his career -- Gypsy, West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, and then Company and Follies -- are probably the highest level musical theater is ever going to hit.

Speaking of which: Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How To Succeed In Business), Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady, Camelot), Oscar Hammerstein II (everything), and Lorenzo da Ponte (Le nocce de Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte).

Bryan Ferry, for the first five Roxy albums anyway.

"Weird Al" Yankovic

Mark Eitzel. He can have some sloppy and maudlin moments, but he's capable of some very moving stuff.

Seconding: Nick Cave, Lou Reed

just to be clear, you're seconding them being over rated right?

How about Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. I don't always care for the music but the lyrics tend to be sharp.
Warren Zevon as well

^^^Good call(s)

PS .: Josh Ritter

lately? Joanna Newsom, maybe.

I came to post Chuck Berry, but Tom D. beat me to it.

I guess I'll post Elliott Smith instead.

No metal lyricists yet. Any suggestions?

Nope!

Maybe Grutle Kjellson.

Alice Cooper.

I'm SO relieved no one's made a case for Bowie.

Exene & John Doe

Guy Clark

syd barrett! also, not mentioned yet, scott walker, stephen malkmus, andrew bird, mark hollis, and david thomas

Andrew Eldritch and Dave Wyndorf, although I suspect those two aren't going to be very popular. As for metal? Lemmy, Dave Mustaine, Peter Steele, Dani Filth.

Karl Sanders from Nile also write some awesome lyrics, although I can't stand the delivery or music.

dave wyndorf, totally. and david sylvian and dave brock

Best lyricist ever

The Best Lyricist In Music, Right Now, Is.......

Name a better lyricist than Mark E Smith

none of these were the thread I was looking for where I rep for Michael Hurley. Peter Blegvad is up there as well.

(hint: SEARCH FUNCTION)

oh sleeve you fascist

sorry I was overcome.

andrew bird

I enjoy the man's music very much, but he does not belong here.

Oh man. Sondheim is a great choice. A Little Night Music has some hysterical lyrical moments.

there's plenty of lyricists i like, but few (maybe even none?) that i would like everything by, or enough to say "this one is the best"

i do love many a writer on this thread but the idea of any of them being the best makes me feel a bit nauseous.

also i really, really do not buy into the whole good lyrics = good poetry thing

sure he does, st3ve; beginning with weather systems and continuing through armchair apocrypha, there's a three album run of remarkable lyrics. "lull" was the first one that caught my ear

Being alone
It can be quite romantic
Like Jacques Cousteau
Underneath the Atlantic
A fantastic voyage
To parts unknown
Going to depths were the suns never shown
And I fascinate myself
When I'm alone

So I go a little overboard
But hang onto the hull
While I'm airbrushing fantasy art on my life
That's really kinda dull
Oh, I'm in a lull

I'm all for moderation
But sometimes it seems
Moderation itself can be kind of extreme
So I join the congregation
Join the softball team
I went in for my confirmation
Where incense looks like steam
I start conjugating proverbs
Where there once were nouns
This whole damn rhyme scheme's
Starting to get me down. . . .

I'm all for moderation
But sometimes it seems
Moderation itself can be kind of extreme

andrew bird's saying what all lol zingers are thinking

positively berman-esque! and one might add dan bejar to this list, i suppose

JOHN FOGERTY

dorothy fields

shouldn't it be separated by what reads well on paper and what works best in a song?

Andrew Bird has some good lines, but he's one of those people (like AC Newman) who sound too obviously like like they came up with a tune and then made some stuff up to fit over it.

I second Ray Davies. Would also like to add Paul Simon.

that paul simon/brian eno was the first album i'd heard in ages where i really LISTENED to the lyrics. i mean, aside from jay-z and other rappers, of course. anyway it wasn't brilliant from start to finish but there were some lines and stanzas and stuff that really caught my attention and made me think "that's cool, you know i think i need to find some new music with really good lyrics"

anyone care to throw out some must-have songs/albums by any of the above-mentioned artists?

My favourite Paul Simon song, in terms of not only lyrics but also melody, arrangement and video even, is "Rene And Georgette Margritte With Their Dog After The War".

Robin Williamson... if only for the "what the fuck is he on about now?" factor

And - I hate rap but Chuck D is a fantastic lyricist. Same about whoever wrote most of the lyrics for The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy's "Hypocricy Is The Greatest Luxury" album.

I'm curious what people get out of Arthur Lee. His lyrics don't bother me, but dont affect me at all.

I love Nick Cave, but I've found that his wordiness is far more dependent on the music than I suspected- when his music became less interesting in the 1990s, the fray of verbiage seemed flat too. And when I started enjoying his backing again (the last three) his words popped out again. His talent is more for setting prose to music than the pithiness I look for in great lyrics.

I used to admire Tom Waits, but his stuff seems very schticky to me now. I think the pre-80s lyrics hold up as heartfelt, though.

Ray Davies: he always worked within the parameters his peers, but hit so much deeper. The music hall of "Sunny Afternoon" is more haunting than anything Macca did. The reactionary drive of "20th Century Man" is more subtle than "Won't Get Fooled Again". "Lola" out hunky-dories Bowie.

Greg Graffin is horrible! He took the nitpicking righteousness of Strummer and Biafra way past their logical end, draining them of the last drops of ambiguity.

Amy Winehouse.

Aesop Rock

Seconding Joe Strummer, John Darnielle, Randy Newman, and Elvis Costello.

I grew up admiring these guys, and I continue to; in my youth I also lionized Jawbreaker's Blake Schwarzenbach, Born Against's Sam MacPheeters, and Ian MacKaye*.

I don't think it's being too charitable to say that many of their songs, or at least passages, hold up remarkably well.

* (His least preachy songs have some incredible imagery and some wonderful, insightful turns of phrase.)

greg cartwright's excellent lyrics are usually overlooked next to his even better songwriting

I still think Blake Schwarzenbach is really good! Nice one. Both 24 Hour Revenge Therapy and Dear You are damn good.

stephin merritt is a pretty awful lyricist, sorry

-- n/a, Thursday, 5 June 2008 18:51 (Yesterday) Link

I can't believe this! Why do you say this?

juvenile

morrissey; mark kozelek; stephin merritt; etc

Marc Bolan, dammit!

CHUCK BERRY CHUCK BERRY CHUCK BERRY

Seconded: Randy Newman, Joe Strummer, Amy Rigby, Craig Finn, Rhett Miller (at his peak), Smokey Robinson, Jay-Z

Not yet mentioned: Jerry Leiber, Boots Riley, Todd Snider, Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley

Sky Saxon

Most of my all-time favorites have already been mentioned, so I'll throw these names in the hat: Matthew Friedberger, Buck 65, Elisa Ambrogio, El-P, Andre 3000, and Genesis P-Orridge.

Oh, and Paul Banks from Interpol.

Not yet mentioned but worthy: Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele. Not a storyteller in the traditional sense, but his lyrics -- which are vague shards of memory or sentiment -- can be very moving, e.g., Losing Haringey (which, when I'm in the right mood, has a powerful nostalgic pull for me; it makes me think about, and sad for the loss of, my youth), and Dreams Of Leaving. So anyway, Alasdair MacLean.

Axl Rose

Rickie Lee Jones

busdriver

kate bush you morans

rennie sparks

courtney love

also, tom t. hall:

The man who preached the funeral
Said it really was a simple way to die ...
He laid down to rest one afternoon
And never opened up his eyes ...
They hired me and Fred and Joe
To dig the grave and carry up some chairs ...
It took us seven hours
And I guess we must have drunk a case of beer. ...

I guess I ought to go and watch them put 'im down
But I don't own a suit
And anyway when they start talkin' about
The fire in Hell, well, I get spooked
So, I'll just sit here in my truck
And act like I don't know 'im when they pass
Anyway, when they're all through
I've got to go to work and mow the grass.

Well, here they come and who's that
Ridin' in that big ol' shiny limousine
Mmh! look at all that chrome, I do believe
That that's the sharpest thing I've seen
That must belong to his great uncle
Someone said he owned a big ol' farm
When they get parked I'll mosey down
and look it over, that won't do no harm.

Well, that must be the widow in the car
And would you take a look at that
That sure is a pretty dress
You know some women do look good in black
Well, he's not even in the ground
And they say that his truck is up for sale
They say she took it pretty hard
But you can't tell too much behind the veil.

Well, listen ain't that pretty
When the bugler plays the Military "TAPS"
I think that when you's in the war
They always hide 'n play a song like that
Well, here I am and there they go
And I guess you'd just call it my bad luck
I hope he rests in peace, the trouble is
The fellow owes me forty bucks.

YES -- TOM T. HALL -- shameful omission.

No Shame at all!

In some of my songs i have casually mentioned
The fact that i like to drink beer
This little song is more to the point
Roll out the barrel and lend me your ears

I like beer. it makes me a jolly good fellow
I like beer. it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
Whiskey's too rough, champagne costs too much, vodka puts my mouth in gear
This little refrain should help me explain as a matter of fact i like beer

My wife often frowns when we're out on the town
And i'm wearing a suit and a tie
She's sipping vermouth and she thinks i'm uncouth
When i yell as the waiter goes by

Last night i dreamed that i passed from the scene
And i went to a place so sublime
Aw, the water was clear and tasted like beer
Then they turned it all into wine

I like beer. it makes me a jolly good fellow
I like beer. it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
Whiskey's too rough, champagne costs too much, and vodka puts my mouth in gear
Aw, this little refrain should help me explain as a matter of fact i love beer

Oh, and Paul Banks from Interpol.

Top Ten Worst Lines on Interpol’s First Album - Staff Top 10 - Stylus Magazine R.I.P.

god i LOVE paul banks.

Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I'm always surprised when TFUL282 don't turn up in threads like this:

"You can fizz out the top or settle to the bottom or stand still inside a liquid life.
You can float away or melt into the ground, but scientists can watch you through the glass and measure forces pulling you, and measure forces pushing you, until you stand still and make the shadows stop.
Vaporize, solidify. Hummingbird in a cube of ice."

or

"Cars bellering sputtering chimneys stifling smothering people hastily baking away.
James, I must retire to the country; should I linger much longer, I shall surely expire.
James, all I want are some horsies, a nice river with fishies, and a cold place to die.
Saddle up, the blacksmith has fashioned blades. Skating thoroughbreds on frozen Mississippi. Shooting holes to catch the fishies hit and run.
Viscous thoughts slosh slowly on through cluttered mind. Fishies figure eight and horsies butterfly. Butler scratches chin and sighs, wonders why."

I mean, almost nobody writes stuff as good as this. I think. Then again, the music is pretty good too.

narrative songwriters and witty turns of phrase > poetry so:

Patty Griffin
Rhett Miller

Eef Barzelay (Clem Snide) is sometimes great

narrative songwriters and witty turns of phrase > poetry so:

Patty Griffin
Rhett Miller

― milo z, Sunday, June 8, 2008

I wish I liked Patty's musical composing as much as some do. But I don't.

I'm not the biggest fan of her voice but Joanna Newsom has some great lyrics.

Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, David Olney, Vic Chesnutt and Mark
Kozelek are great storytellers.

Beat-poet Nicole Blackman did some guest appearances for Golden Palominos - Dead Inside and Recoil's Liquid. Highly quotable yet spiteful and depressing.

Hip-hop wise GZA, RZA and all of the Wu Tang in general are excellent. Aesop Rock apparently has the widest vocabulary in the genre:

http://rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

That link reminded me I also love the lyrics of Kool Keith and Madvillian.

*I meant MF Doom