Song lyrics aren’t just by pop stars, and (as with any art form) there’s a huge range of quality.
There’s a poet who’s no longer speaking to me, and one of the many reasons is that I said song lyrics counted as poetry. I wish I could be sure of what she said on the subject, but I think is was that people are willing to repeatedly listen to the same song in a way that they aren’t willing to listen to spoken poetry or read poetry. I don’t know whether this is a reasonable distinction.
Nor whether a culture losing the centrality of spoken and read poetry is important, or whether rap (which has a distinctive presentation that’s neither singing nor speech) should be reasonably counted as poetry, song (rap music occupies the same cultural niche as melodicly based music), or something else.
For that matter, I don’t know whether ancient poetry (Homer, the sagas) was typically declaimed or chanted.
Reality may have joints in this area that it can be cut at, but I don’t know how to identify them.
Song lyrics aren’t just by pop stars, and (as with any art form) there’s a huge range of quality.
There’s a poet who’s no longer speaking to me, and one of the many reasons is that I said song lyrics counted as poetry. I wish I could be sure of what she said on the subject, but I think is was that people are willing to repeatedly listen to the same song in a way that they aren’t willing to listen to spoken poetry or read poetry. I don’t know whether this is a reasonable distinction.
Nor whether a culture losing the centrality of spoken and read poetry is important, or whether rap (which has a distinctive presentation that’s neither singing nor speech) should be reasonably counted as poetry, song (rap music occupies the same cultural niche as melodicly based music), or something else.
For that matter, I don’t know whether ancient poetry (Homer, the sagas) was typically declaimed or chanted.
Reality may have joints in this area that it can be cut at, but I don’t know how to identify them.