The best songwriters have an amazing gift, to work beautiful profound messages in to their music and create songs that resonate with audiences for decades. This list counts down 11 times musicians wrote truly poetic words and worked them in to their music. These are all artists and songs I really admire. Let me know what you think in the comments, and if I left any of your favourites out.
11. Watsky – Lovely Suite Things: Roses
“but you wont hold on to a shadow just by grabbing it tight, set it free and let it back in the light.”
10. Simon and Garfunkel – The sound of silence
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sound of silence”
9. Pink Floyd – Welcome to the machine
“It’s alright we know where you’ve been. You’ve been in the pipeline, filling in time. Provided with toys and ‘scouting for boys'”
8. Scroobius Pip – Broken Promise
“when we were fighting, there used to be thunder and lightning. Ferociously frightening, a clash of the Titans. Emotions heightened, every single muscle tightened. An addiction to the thrill of the fight, the excitement.”
7. Don Mclean – Vincent
“Starry, starry night. Flaming flowers that brightly blaze. Swirling clouds in violet haze. Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue.”
6. Lupe Fiasco – Pick up the phone
“and in our prehistorics, the flowers was rooting for us. Brontosaurus ate the flowers, T-Rex are the Brontosaurus.”
5. Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah
“She tied you to a kitchen chair. She broke your throne, and she cut your hair. And from your lips she drew the hallelujah.”
4. Kanye West – Homecoming
“You got a new friend. Well I got homies, but in the end it’s still so lonely.”
3. Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
“Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on. And it makes me wonder.”
2. Andy Williams – Moon River
“Two drifters, off to see the world. There’s such a lot of world to see, we’re after the same rainbow’s end.”
1. Tupac Shakur – Starin’ through my rear view
“I will never understand this society, first they try to murder me, then they lie to me, product of a dying breed.”