Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Replies have been edited for length and clarity.
Last week, I asked readers to make nominations to a hall of fame for song lyrics. Trusting that you’re all aware of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Carole King, and others of similar renown, I’m highlighting the responses most likely to turn you on to artists or songs you don’t know.
For younger readers, that might be the (admittedly quite famous) 20th-century songwriter Irving Berlin, nominated by Karen:
How about “Before the fiddlers have fled / before they ask us to pay the bill, and while we still have the chance / let’s face the music and dance.” Or this one: “And the cares that hung around me for a week / seem to vanish like a gambler’s lucky streak / when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.”
Jaleelah chooses the governor of California’s “more talented distant cousin.” She writes:
I would 100% pick a lyric written by Joanna Newsom. Her work is magical. She uses precise language to paint the clearest, most beautiful, most unique imagery I have ever encountered.
One of Newsom’s strengths is illustrating changes in her settings rather than simply hopping between discrete points in time and space. In “Emily,” Newsom sets the scene with the lyrics: “There is a rusty light on the pines tonight / Sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow / into the bones of the birches, and the spires of the churches / jutting out from the shadows.” The dynamic nature of her sunset—one that not only colours the town, but infuses it with the substances of life—helps the song feel warm and real.
“Only Skin” depicts bombs reshaping the heavens in a bad dream: “Sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl / And when the bread broke / Fell in bricks of wet smoke / My sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke.” I don’t only see the bombs: I taste and feel them.The texture she gives to her scenery is incredible.
While she is a master of complex and heavy language, some of her best lyrics are simple and striking. “I regret / how I said to you, ‘honey, just open your heart,’ / when I’ve got trouble even opening a honey jar” captures a moment of inspiring empathy. This declaration shows a self-awareness and maturity that many fine lyricists lack.
But if I had to choose just one entry for the lyrical hall of fame, I’d pick a lyric from the last verse of “En Gallop” that displays humility on a meta level: “Never get so attached to a poem / you forget truth that lacks lyricism.” That is timeless and wise.
Whether Joanna Newsom is your top pick or not, she is one of the most talented lyricists of the century. Yet instead of selling morals to her devoted audience, she reminds them that she does not hold a monopoly on truth. Other talented and charismatic individuals would do well to follow her lead.
Music is about building on what came before you. Newsom is surely indebted to Texas Gladden and Ernest Hemingway, just as Bob Dylan (who should also be in this fictional hall of fame) is indebted to Woody Guthrie and Big Brown. I don’t think Joanna Newsom should be excluded from the conversation just because she wrote in the 2000s and ’10s instead of the 1950s and ’60s. There have been many great lyricists before her, but her talent has earned her a place in their league.
Melanie focuses on the decade when she came of age and argues that, although very successful, perhaps the best lyricist of the 1990s—the band Counting Crows and, by extension, its frontman and principal songwriter, Adam Duritz—got somewhat overlooked in favor of the era’s “darker” bands, such as Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails.”
She explains:
The lyrical skill of Counting Crows is stunning, especially when coupled with their knack for writing songs with a heavy pop or country feel, which leave listeners unprepared for the sheer darkness and pessimism contained within the lyrics. Shards of unutterable emotional truth, like “even the best years leave a lot to be desired, and then they pass you by” or “and the one thing you won’t say is / ‘everyone knows possibility days are impossible’ / it just feels wrong, so wrong / still you’re gone, long gone,” create a sort of whiplash. You have just heard some of the worst things your mind spews at you being sung by someone else’s voice, in an accessible, pop-ish song. That is truly Counting Crows’ magic—a magic very easily overlooked, but life-changing to the observant.
As for a single Counting Crows song for a Lyrics Hall of Fame, I think I would vote for “You Can’t Count on Me,” the single from their 2008 album, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. In 237 words, it tells the story of a protagonist falling in love and knowing that he can’t be an adequate partner due to his own issues (mental illness is implied); the partner falling in love and not grasping the sagacity of the advice; the relationship ending; the protagonist’s former partner being hurt and the protagonist feeling good about that hurt, because as ill-fated as he knew the relationship was, it still had meaning and its loss represents real pain.
That’s a lot of story and a lot of detail and a lot of emotion in a 282-word song that you can hear at the supermarket, with brilliance that can totally be overlooked if you don’t pay attention to the lyrics.
James explores the work of a punk-rock band from San Pedro, California:
Poetry is dependent on the natural cadence of human speech, while song lyrics rarely are. Songs provide distinct structures that can lead us to derive meanings and feelings from words we wouldn’t necessarily get from the printed page.
That being said, I would probably choose something by Minutemen, perhaps the song “Spillage.” I believe the band’s bassist, Mike Watt, wrote this set of lyrics, and he is the member whose lyrics tend to be more self-reflective, existential, and abstract. It’s a bit strange to see his lyrics in print and remember they are sung/shouted within the context of a punk song. “Spillage” is, I think, the most natural synthesis between the band’s leftist politics (largely manifested in the lyrics of the singer and guitarist, D. Boon) and Watt’s more personal concerns. Being 14 lines, it is actually one of the group’s lengthier sets of lyrics, as few of their songs ever pass even the two-minute mark.
A clear and dusty day in June
My stoned mind just spilled that line
Describing, what’s it like, describing?
Believing that the sum is yes
Looking around at all my comrades
My police state mind just spilled that line
I want to give names to our bonds
I need names to play the game
But what makes my heart run?
Why the thunder in my thighs?
My body
My mind
The idea of my life
Seems like a symbol
Here we have concerns with freedom of imagination and whether it is possible without language; allusions to authoritarianism and communism ( whose dichotomy is not as cut-and-dried as one might expect from a leftist group, but nor are they entirely conflated); and how language can be a weapon of the state while also being essential to organization. All of this culminates with a yearning for something beyond being merely a representation of life, whether contemplation (and thus organization, possibly of both the linguistic and social variety) can lead to interpreting one’s existence as something essentially meaningful and real. I don’t think many lyricists can so succinctly offer queries like these, nor as poetically, especially outside the realm of a traditional “songwriter” tradition.
Stephen nominates “City of New Orleans” and the song’s writer:
It was written and first released by Steve Goodman in 1971. Arlo Guthrie’s version is best known, and Willie Nelson’s release earned Goodman a Grammy for Best Country Song in 1985. It was awarded posthumously because Steve Goodman died of leukemia in 1984, at age 36.
The lyrics of “City of New Orleans” hauntingly describe the impending demise of the golden era of train travel in the United States. And more.
Goodman was a proud product of Chicago. He embraced all the grit, self-awareness, humor, and hidden strength that comes from growing up in the “City of Big Shoulders.” He starts with mundane, local details: Illinois Central, Monday morning, and pulling out from Kankakee. Then the train takes us on a ghostly ride from the top of the map to the bottom. We know something sad is happening, because we are passing “trains that have no names” and the “graveyards of the rusted automobiles.” Then we realize what’s going on before the train does. We all fade into a “bad dream,” but “the steel rail still ain’t heard the news.” Then it becomes clear: “This train got the disappearing railroad blues.”
This song, through its lyrics and its soft accepting tone, foretells the end of the train era, the rusting of the once prosperous Midwest, and, if we listen carefully, we may even get a warning of the early death of this great songwriter.
Luciano writes, “For me, the best lyrics take mundane, depressing, even harrowing situations and turn them into art. Often, this is done by songwriters considered outside of the mainstream of their genre.”
He continues:
My nomination would be the magisterial 1969 opus “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” by Kris Kristofferson.
Kristofferson’s story is as [uncharacteristic] as it gets for a country star: Born to a military family, he was a college graduate as a student he wrote several essays for The Atlantic), Rhodes Scholar, and military officer about to be an instructor at West Point when the country-music bug bit him. “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” is in many ways reflective of his out-of-the-box upbringing (in country terms). The song revolves around a Sunday morning spent nursing a hangover—hence the “comin’ down.” The opening lines give a sense of how he sees the situation:
Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad
So I had one more for dessert
It reads almost like a poem out of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, or even one by a 19th-century Romantic poet, like William Wordsworth—and it’s just about the hair of the dog to take the edge off. The lyrics take the listener through not only the pain of the hangover, but the regrets of returning to the world in the state he is in:
Then I crossed the empty street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken
And it took me back to somethin’
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way
The imagery just goes on and on. You feel you’re walking with him (or stumbling, as he does) out to the light of Sunday morning wondering what the hell happened the night before. My favorite verse is near the end, when, after he details the everyday happenings of the sober folks around him, he hears church bells in the distance:
Then I headed back for home
And somewhere far away a lonesome bell was ringin’
And it echoed through the canyons
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday
Those “disappearing dreams of yesterday” just tear my heart out. It’s a verse that could be Merriam-Webster’s definition of regret. And who could forget that chorus, which summarizes the melancholy and confusion of the morning after so vividly:
On the Sunday morning sidewalks
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned
’Cause there’s something in a Sunday
Makes a body feel alone
There ain’t nothin’ short of dyin’
Half as lonesome as the sound
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down
This song was recorded by so many artists; famously, Kristofferson was reluctant to record it himself. The poetry of the lyrics often make you forget that it’s even a song to begin with. For me, “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” is one of the greatest lyric achievements in not only country music, but American music.
Matt nominates Iron & Wine’s song “The Trapeze Swinger”:
The song is a long ballad in a soothing, steady rhythm that captures so many facets of nostalgic reminiscing of first love. While there’s not a refrain or chorus, the phrase we’ll hear multiple times is “Please remember me.” The haunting delivery of Sam Beam’s soft voice always sets this song apart, and I find myself listening to all nine minutes. That haunting permeates the song with notes of religious imagery. In nostalgia, we look back on the past in a much kinder way, and each verse of this song paints over and over a deepening varnish on that love and the twinge of pain that stays with us.
Errol seizes the opportunity “to try to bring attention to someone who I would argue is one of the greatest lyricists of all time: Warren Zevon.” He writes:
There are a great many songs by him that I could highlight, but for the purpose of lyrics only as a nomination, I would pick “Tenderness on the Block.” I love songs that are stories, and this one tells a sweet tale of a father watching his little girl grow up to become an independent, free-thinking adult. The lyrics calm his worries of letting her out into the world, emphasizing that she’ll be okay and that she’s “streetwise to the lies and the jive talk.” I find it to be one of his more whimsical songs, as he was mostly a satirist and had many demons throughout his life. “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” is a quintessential rock-and-roll-star biography, although he was far from the rock-and-roll-star stature.
Honorable mentions for him would be “Splendid Isolation,” “Mr. Bad Example,” “Desperados Under the Eaves,” and “Life’ll Kill Ya.” Anyone who is a fan of folk, rock, and dark humor should seek this artist out.
Hip-hop was definitely underrepresented in your responses. If you’re looking for an accessible introduction to the best of that genre, I highly recommend the Dissect podcast, especially the seasons dedicated to Kendrick Lamar and Ye (formerly Kayne West), as well as Jay-Z’s book Decoded. See you later this week.