Poem or Song? Part I

Poems are lyrics and lyrics are poems.  Take many songs out of the context of music and they sound like true poetry and set poetry to music and they are fantastic lyrics.  Some of my favorite music is where the music has a story to tell, a poetic story, and it does it through the medium of music.



The song "Eleanor Rigby" might not be one of the catchiest Beatles songs, but at easily ranks in their top 5 most poetic (and they were an extremely poetic band).  It is from their album "Revolver" which to me, may be their seminal album.  Why that and not Sgt. Peppers which came after it?  There would be no Sgt. Pepper without Revolver.  Revolver was their first album that was truly poetic through and through and was their first real foray into psychadelic music and even a bit of hard rock.

The lyrics though of Eleanor Rigby are truly beautiful and haunting.  The first verse describes this lonely person who has no connection to society and "wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door" (her true self and emotions are "bottled up").  The second verse is more of a bridge into the meat of the 3rd when Eleanor has died and no one cares.  She is the last of her line and her name "dies".  This one is so poetic, I was able to write a whole essay on it for a class.

Another great song is "The Sound of Silence".  I don't want to type out all the lyrics, so here is a place where you can find the lyrics to the song.  It reminds me pretty vividly of "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost  which also makes me think of loneliness.  Although Simon and Garfunkel wrote the song about the inability to communicate, the clearer symbol is that of isolation.  An inability to communicate can also lead to isolation, both The Sound of Silence and Acquainted with the night touch the reader with the loneliness and isolation of the speaker.  Both express the speaker's inability to communicate (or in "Sound of Silence, society's inability to communicate).

(Lyrics don't start until 5:10 in)

The last song is "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd.  The song is dedicated to Syd Barrett, their former band member who ended up having psychotic episodes and left the band because of it.  His nickname was "Crazy Diamond" which is where the title comes from (also the title has the acronym S.Y.D hidden in it).  The lyrics echo some of the great things about Syd Barrett and empathizing with what happened to him.  First he "shone like the sun" and had a bright personality, but then his mental state took over and he had "eyes like black holes in the sky".  It also goes on to reference how he was not ready on an emotional level for the fame stardom.  The song is really sad in many ways (it references how they haven't seen their friend for a long time, his dark shadows, how he alienated himself) and Its possible to delve deeper, but my main goal was to show the poetry.  Each poetic song truly could get its own post, but that may be unnecessary.