What are some lyricists in popular music that you would say have written some lyrics of artistic merit?

None

Nick Cave and Bono are garbage

built to spill

What is it about music that makes people retarded?

Not even memeing. Quite probably the schizoidly narcissitic / insecure voice of his generation.

David Lang and John Tavener

Shane

panda bear is top tier new sincerity tbqh

Young Thug

Rap is 100% mindless boasting and sex/drug/crime worship
So is classic rock and punk
Indie rock is all second rate muh fee fees >Reads Nietzsche once bullshit
"""Folk""" is same shit as indie rock but it's somewhat more introspective in return for completely uninteresting instrumentation
"Art Pop" like Newsom and Bush is just watered down romantic poetry hooked to mediocre arrangements
Post-Punk and other avant-garde shit is either complete nonsense or *tips katana* tier edginess
Non-classical styled electronic is either without vocals or has cringey party/romance shit

ITAOTS has great instrumentation and lyrics tbqh

you are stupid, not because I disagree with you, but due to your poor judgements.

Van Dyke Parks. Song Cycle in particular.

Bait? I take personal offense to you not thinking Jackson Browne's lyrics have merit.

Not the most popular, but I've liked the work of Toh Kay/Streetlight Manifesto

We're going down, down, down to Mephisto's Cafe
Down, down, down to Mephisto's Cafe (We're going down)
And the gears will spin and the sinners sin, but at least we'll give them hell
And the righteous few will spit on you, so bid them all farewell
We're going down, down, down to Mephisto's Cafe
We're going down (Right?) (Right!)

So fuck the flocks of sheep that keep amassing masses
Asses being led so far astray
And I won't claim to believe the things I read
Black books or agenda magazine
I'd rather see in shades of gray

If I were you, I would take this as a sign
Believe it's true, we were never meant to fly

And I knew you when you were you
Before they twisted all your views
Before you came unglued

I agree that listening to music for lyrics is kind of dumb considering it will never be as good as actual literature, but damn you said it in the most edgy way possible. I doubt you have many friends

Lol no

She's one of the few artists who's music and lyrics evoke a specific setting so totally that it makes me feel like I'm there.

Matty Healy of The 1975 for pop (Idc if they say they're indie or whatever shit they are definitely pop). Not everything he writes is great but there are some gems.

>classic rock is sex/drug/crime worship
Who are Frank Zappa and Led Zeppelin?
>Folk is indie
Maybe if you listened to actual folk music, you wouldn't think that
>Art Pop is just romantic poetry
Who are David Byrne and David Bowie?
>Avant-garde is nonsense
Who is Tom Waits
also
>implying that's a bad thing

It's like you don't actually listen to music, you just looked up a bunch of stereotypes

>listening to music for lyrics is kind of dumb considering it will never be as good as actual literature

What a shit opinion. What a close-minded ignorant fucking thing to say. You should be ashamed.

Arctic monkeys - Teddy picker

I'm sorry that you're a tastelet

This

>Frank Zappa
>Led Zeppelin
>not sex and drug worship
Are you mentally retarded?
>Maybe if you listened to actual folk music, you wouldn't think that
Of course, discounting the "ah brought my tractor down by the hill/ and found ma dear old mama was dead" meme tier traditional folk
>Who are David Byrne and David Bowie?
David Byrne is "look at me so quirky xD"
David Bowie is "space and drugs lmao xd"
>Who is Tom Waits
A degenerate posing as a 20's blues singer

In general, music should never have lyrics. Lyric poetry is great and can be set to music wonderfully, but most pop musicians simply cannot write for shit.

>lol everybody except me is a brainwashed sheep
Embarassing

They don't. He's mediocre at best.

>NOW IF I FUCK THIS MODEL

Kendrick Lamar

The only good lyricists all published music before the 50s. Everything since is amateur Garbage Rock oops I mean Garage.

>le black lives matter man
no thanks

This. He's pretty much Gil-Scott reborn.

>The only good lyricists all published music before the 50s.
Who?

>Zappa and Zeppelin
>sex and drug worship
Calm down there Tipper and maybe actually listen to their music and read some of the stuff they said. Zappa didn't use drugs, and most of his sex stuff was comedic.
Zeppelin, whiled having a lot of sex stuff, mostly came from a blues influence. Their later stuff had almost folk-y lyrics.

>Byrne: quirky for quirkiness' sake
Maybe, but it leads to better music than most of what else is put out there. It's almost like watching someone trying to be human, but not quite grasping it.
>Bowie: space and drugs
Also literally did the human thing with 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'
But if you think he only did space stuff, you've listened to what, three of his songs?

>Waits: Blues
Not really since Swordfishtrombones. Most of his stuff is experimental.
Anyways, your ignorance is showing.

Gil-Scott only wrote songs about two subjects
>da white man be oppressin us black folk!
and
>mane being a drug addict sucks ass

>Calm down there Tipper and maybe actually listen to their music and read some of the stuff they said. Zappa didn't use drugs, and most of his sex stuff was comedic.
That's even worse: "dirty jokes". Embarassing.
>Zeppelin, whiled having a lot of sex stuff, mostly came from a blues influence. Their later stuff had almost folk-y lyrics.
You deny that Zeppelin wrote tons of songs about sex? They were never deep.
>Maybe, but it leads to better music than most of what else is put out there. It's almost like watching someone trying to be human, but not quite grasping it.
It's entertaining, but it's not impressive
>Also literally did the human thing with 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'
>But if you think he only did space stuff, you've listened to what, three of his songs?
Bowie is like every other rock star: gimmicky.
>Not really since Swordfishtrombones. Most of his stuff is experimental.
You mean the album that was "influenced by vaudeville"?

Plenty of the Yes catalogue, though sometimes it gets really fucking weird.
Pink Floyd too, sometimes on the edgier side but eh.
Plenty of prog rock.

for rap;
>MF Doom
>Milo
>Tribe called quest
>All Alt-Rap
>All Conscious Hip-Hop

For classic rock
>Zappa
>Pink Floyd
>(other entry-tier prog bands)

Punk and Post-punk;
>Slint
>Dead Kennedys
>Fugazi
>Swans

Indie/Folk/Singer-songwriter
>Nick Drake
>Nebraska (Springsteen)
>Sufjan Stevens
>Randy Newman

Here are some examples that go against your generalizing statements, you musically illiterate faggot.

>Yes and Pink Floyd have good lyrics
I genuinely don't understand how you can read literature and still think this

>Love is the only answer, hate is the root of cancer then.

Deep!

>>MF Doom
le wacky wordplay man
>>Milo
psuedo-philosophy
>>Tribe called quest
hey guys, we're cool and don't give a shit, haha
>>All Alt-Rap
not a thing
>>All Conscious Hip-Hop
nigger whining

>>Zappa
le quirky old guy xd fuck hippies
>>Pink Floyd
drugs and space, wow so deep
>>(other entry-tier prog bands)
drugs etc

>>Slint
/r9k/ tier
>>Dead Kennedys
edgy teen tier
>>Fugazi
edgy teen tier
>>Swans
edgy manchild tier

>>Nick Drake
self-pity: the musician
>>Nebraska (Springsteen)
le americana man
>>Sufjan Stevens
le depressed christian numale
>>Randy Newman
New York kike

>Zappa stated that he tried smoking cannabis ten times, but without any pleasure or result beyond sleepiness and sore throat, and "never used LSD, never used cocaine, never used heroin or any of that other stuff."[218]

>David Byrne is "look at me so quirky xD"
I guess you've never even bothered to listen to his music close enough to challenge your surface-level impression. An album like Remain In Light is an extremely inventive way of commenting on social and political issues in popular music solely through abstract metaphor.

>I guess you've never even bothered to listen to his music close enough to challenge your surface-level impression. An album like Remain In Light is an extremely inventive way of commenting on social and political issues in popular music solely through abstract metaphor.
Yes, very deep and literary

>dirty jokes
>Embarrassing
bruh,
Do you even read Shakespeare?

Zeppelin did have sex songs, but they did a bunch of other stuff. The question was never 'were they deep' it was weather they were '100% drug and sex worship'.

>it's not impressive
>implying every new album has to be groundbreaking
>implying the Talking Heads weren't one of the most influential bands of all time
Also, fuck you, I like it

>influenced by vaudeville
Christ, do you just read the wikipedia page for this? Most of his stuff since Swordfishtrombones has vaudevillian influences.

5/10 for making me and others reply

I might be biased cause I also play an instrument and I'm a sucker for prog rock instrumentation. I just think the lyrics go really well with the melodies, so it isn't really a merit of the lyrics themselves but in conjunction with the rest of the song.

So are you going to go into any specific analytical detail as to what enforces these criticisms of yours or are you just going to meme like a child?

Yeah, I think that happens when you're a musician, you stop paying attention to the words and more listen to how they sound with the music.

I'm a sucker for patter-esque songs and alliteration

>Zeppelin did have sex songs, but they did a bunch of other stuff. The question was never 'were they deep' it was weather they were '100% drug and sex worship'.
Ah yes. He also had his "satire".
>>implying every new album has to be groundbreaking
>>implying the Talking Heads weren't one of the most influential bands of all time
>Also, fuck you, I like it
I never said that, I just said that it isn't Veeky Forumserary
>Christ, do you just read the wikipedia page for this? Most of his stuff since Swordfishtrombones has vaudevillian influences.
It proves my point. Tom Waits is a 1920s LARPer

lol dude your taste is shitty

>/mu/ tries to pass of dadrock as "poetic" when the answer staring them in the face

Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums
The music and medicine you needed for comforting
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving
And pluck all your silly strings and bend all your notes for me
Soft silly music is meaningful magical
The movements were beautiful all in your ovaries
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines
Smelling of semen all under the garden was all you were needing
When you still believed in me

Simultaneously surreal and richly evocative, Mangum's lyrics are never as nonsensical as they seem. The Lewis Carrol comparisons are justified, though the true beauty and art at the center of Mangum's poetry is that the Wonderland, the world he's describing, is our own.

I suppose lyricism is multifaceted. Just as it is writing it is also has to be music. I suppose even the best need to compromise somewhere.

It's not a compromise, it's a sliding scale. Some people are going to try to sing really meaningful stuff, but not do it too well. Others will not aim so high, but be more musical.

This is really exemplified in Tupac vs. Biggie Smalls. Tupac had some tracks about ghetto life and being black, but Biggie's flow was years ahead. Despite this, his biggest stuff was ego boasting, the pervasiveness of which to this day remains my greatest problem with rap

None.

I've also listened to more popular music than you, so don't try to claim I'm 'fuggin ignant' or whatever ideologue retort you people have begun to use to ignore those that disagree with you.

In fact, I likely still listen to more popular music than all of you, I just don't pretend it's intellectual (the majority of 'classical' music is not intellectual either, by the way.)
>Who are Frank Zappa and Led Zeppelin?
Frank Zappa is extremely open about his behaviors in his music. Perhaps if you listened to it, rather than mirror his libertarian nonsense for aesthetic reasons, you would know this. No, it's not comedic as you said elsewhere in the thread. And regardless, ironic shitposting is still shitposting.

Led Zeppelin was a band of perverts. Jimmy Page raped and kidnapped a 14-year-old girl (for four years!)
They were obsessed with the occult. Ozzy became very devout early on in his career after an early history of occultism, but Led Zeppelin I believe never renounced it.

>Maybe if you listened to actual folk music, you wouldn't think that
Contemporary 'folk' is the whinings of the bourgeoisie.
Traditional folk is too diverse to speak of.

>Who are David Byrne and David Bowie?
Neither are 'art-pop'. You're applying a label that should be attached to them (they have more in common with pop art than so-called 'art-pop') but cannot due to the term's current usage.

I would say some of their music is somewhat similar to romantic poetry. Or, at least, is heavily romantic (side 2 of "Low", despite largely being lyricless if my memory serves me right.)

>Who is Tom Waits
Not avant-garde. I would never call popular music 'avant-garde.'
Tom Waits' best work is very conventional (Closing Time.)
His other work is nonsense, bad nonsense which is by definition a 'bad thing' (nonsense being the thing.)

>it's not comedic
"Don't Eat the Yellow Snow Suite"? "Dancin' Fool"? "Cosmik Debris'? Parts I, II & III of Joe's Garage? "Muffin Man"?
I bet if it doesn't start with 'Knock Knock', you don't think it's funny.

>band of perverts
Yeah, but that wasn't the issue, it was whether they were '100% drug and sex worship'

>his other work is nonsense
>makes an opera based on a german folk tale

Well the question was if there where in popular music lyricists with artistic merit, not something that is necessarily intellectual in nature. Though I do agree most of the things displayed on this thread have not been particularly thought provoking in terms of lyrics.

>slint
>/r9k/ tier

I never thought of it that way holy kek.

It can be comedic and still be serious.

>makes an opera based on a german folk tale
oh wow that hasnt been done before
'artistic merit' doesn't mean much.

My guilty pleasure is Radiohead. None of their lyrics have 'artistic merit' in the subjective (meaningful) sense, they are just somewhat ''''interesting''''. What does that mean? There is something surreal or perturbing about them.

Nor are they '''intellectual'''

Most poetry with 'artistic merit' is somewhat not great. Yeats is praised, but I believe he could not form an interesting idea or string of words in the English language if he were given eternity to, while Radiohead has despite me also not actually liking them.

Honestly, everything is pretty terrible.
>flint
mama mia

for rap;
>MF Doom
LARPing fatso that pseuds praise for puns or whatever like it is something remotely new.
>Milo
Pseudo PoMo nonsense.
>Tribe called quest
WE
>All Alt-Rap
>All Conscious Hip-Hop
The worst music to ever exist. The height of pseudo-intellectualism.

For classic rock
>Zappa
Already stated in another post by me.
>Pink Floyd
Drug-addled pseuds.
>(other entry-tier prog bands)
Not at all. Gentle Giant surely has the 'best' lyrics of all this crapfest, and they still aren't great.

Punk and Post-punk;
>Slint
mama mia. /r9k/ 'NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!!!' nonsense
>Dead Kennedys
EVERYBODY THAT DISAGREES WITH MY POLITICS IS FUCKING EVIL HAHA IM MAKING FUN OF THEM SO I LOOK INTELLIGENT WHILE STILL INSULTING THEM
>Fugazi
DRUGS AND VIOLENCE ARE BAD!!!
>Swans
More LARPers, this time obsessed with rape.

Indie/Folk/Singer-songwriter
>Nick Drake
im so depressed lmao but sometimes im not and also i have bretty bad relationships
>Nebraska (Springsteen)
Only good track is Atlantic City, the rest is trash.
>Sufjan Stevens
Comedically bad.
>Randy Newman
Are you serious? He definitely wasn't.

Not English, but Egor Letov and Yanka Dyagileva

I also like Scott Walker

I'm interested on hearing the pseudo intellectual opinions on Piirpauke and 0.720 Aleacion

Fair 'nuff.
Normally interesting is good enough for me, cause "artistic" in most terms is too vague to define anything. I suppose it all comes how much impact or originality as to how worth it is to listen to. Artsy is boring compared to interesting.

Świetliki
Siekiera
Pere Ubu
Comus
Captain Beefheart
Coil

Real patrician music, like Merzbow, Boredoms, Gerogerigegege, Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Nurse with Wound, Einstürzende Neubauten, Brainbombs, Egor Letov, Death in June, Current 93, La Monte Young, Moondog, Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, Luigi Russolo, Popol Vuh, Fishmans, Jean Jacques Perrey, Les Rallizes Dénudés, Rainbow Caroliner, Taj Mahal Travellers, Fushitsusha, DNA, Peter Brötzmann, John Cage, Scott Walker, Unwound, Dead, Frank Zappa, Morton Feldman, Captain Beefheart, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nang Nang, Haruomi Hosono, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Nara Leão, Basic Channel, Raymond Scott, Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Noah Howard, Terry Riley, Peter Sotos, Lula Côrtes e Zé Ramalho, Boyd Rice, Mahmoud Ahmed, Henry Flynt, Kazumoto Endo, David Tudor, Aporea, Half Japanese, Mega Banton, Secret Chiefs 3, Keiji Haino, Ramleh, Otomo Yoshihide, John Zorn, Joe Meek, Robbie Basho, Phil Spector, Faxed Head, Harry Partch, Frances Baskerville, Wesley Willis, Fred Frith, The Residents, Sun Ra, Sun City Girls, Hans Krüsi, Royal Trux, Jandek, Yat-Kha, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Pärson Sound, The Dead C, Comus, Cromagnon, Eliane Radigue, Arthur Doyle, Shizuka, The Red Krayola, Henry Cow, Magma, Opus Avantra, Pan.Thy.Monium., Murmuüre, Ksiezyc, Gong, Cukor Bila Smert', cLOUDDEAD, Muslimgauze and Kaoru Abe

Holy... I want more

Bauhaus has some pretty neat lyrics imo.

Gosh, how can I refute such careful devastating analysis? The lyrics to Joshua Tree, taken as a whole, have clear artistic merit. That doesn't mean they're Eliot or Yeats, but they're good.

>eliot
>yeats
>artistic merit
top kek

but most of those have no lyrics

literally just random nonsense, entertaining though
>ALL OF THE JEWS DOWN IN DACHAU BLUES
>I WANNA MAKE A DEAL WITH YOU GIRL

user is showing off, music snobs are the worst.

>Sun Ra
>Death in June
>Moondog
>Magma
>Secret Chiefs 3
>John Zorn
These are the only ones I have any familiarity with, especially Magama and Secret Chiefs 3. By extension I found bands like Kōenji Hyakkei and Kayo Dot, both of which I think could fit in this thread

>he doesn't recognize the meme

All shit except for Schoenberg, Beefheart, Ayler, and Coleman

I have met people like that and I don't browse /mu/. I'm actually relieved this is a meme.

Acknowledging Saul Williams is enough to know you aren't too racist. Dude's a projection of what libral ideal will be in 30 years. He's great though.

npr compared pic related to Woolf
said she was a nuanced songwriter in some powerful ways

and they're right

i think you might like "for an old kentucky anarchist" by erik petersen. Check it out if you find the time

NPR is pseud central.

Woolf isn't great.

Apple is pretty awful and has a massive victim complex in recent news.

It wasn't totally my jam but man,
did society ever ruin punk.
This song's giving me nostalgia

>not knowing the meme

Those artists are all liked by the people who think they're too good for conventionally popular artists but aren't good enough to appreciate actual intellectual music like Bach.

most bands have lyrics with some artistic merit. Music is a similar art form to lyric poetry, it's silly to insist that one form expression is less artistic than the other.

But it's controlled, intentional nonsense that perfectly embodies the intended surreal aesthetic they are creating

Not in the dadaist "talentless and annoying but intentional to provoke thought" way, but in a way that creates a unique atmosphere

In "The Craft of Lyric Writing" Sheila Davis makes many strong arguments against thinking about song lyrics as poetry or a type of poetry. In popular music, as distinguished from Art Song settings of poetry, the emphasis is on intelligibility, clarity, singability, etc. The listener doesn't have the luxury to re-read and savor each line as songs rely on a constant forward momentum not necessary for a poem. Even if you're reading the lyrics along with the song it's not the same experience as reading a poetry. And reading the lyrics in isolation feels empty without hte music.

I think that's why great songwriters like those listed in the first post use relatively simple diction to create complex ideas and imagery. I wish I could find the survey of Bob Dylan's diction which shows a tendency to avoid words longer than four syllables. There aren't a lot of obscure or sesquipedalian words in his writing. That kind of stuff is great in poetry but nearly always seems pretentious or corny even in the best lyrics.

Pete Townsend is someone whose increasing prolixity due to increasing alcoholism resulted in increasingly bad lyrics. It's the verbal equivalent of a musician who overplays.

I think it's because it's almost impossible to separate lyrics from music once you've made an emotional connection with a song. The lyrics will always evoke a memories of the melody and the emotions created by the song's music. So I think that makes even people who should know better "retarded." That's why you see people posting the cheesiest lyrics on Facebook or whatever as if they were brilliant poetry. It's definitely a weird cognitive blind spot: books.google.com/books?id=kpmlBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT274&lpg=PT274&dq=lyrics seem profound because of music&source=bl&ots=8wZjrj7Or5&sig=xFF-YUZxVNLV0b0D9PcbRhWgN98&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwip1ees9-vRAhXoqlQKHb9RAO8Q6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=lyrics seem profound because of music&f=false

"Music has the capacity to exaggerate individuals' emotional responses to linguistic information."

Here's some more theorizing about it: whatismusic.info/blog/WhyDoSongLyricsSoundSignificantAndProfound.html

chuck schuldiner

kanye's one of my favorite lyricists, he has a perfect lyric for almost every situation

>Rap is 100% mindless boasting and sex/drug/crime worship

so edgy

I like the lyrics from the first R.E.M record.

Slam metal has best lyrics desu

HERE I COME

THEY CALL ME

A BEAST LIKE NONE BEFORE

Not entirely wrong, but all extreme generalizations. There are plenty of worthwhile lyricists within each of those categories.