SILLY LOVE SONGS: HOW TO APPROACH POP AND ROCK POETRY

Abstract

Criticism of popular music often does not take into account the fact that a song’s lyrics might have equal value to its melodic component, focusing instead on music only, or considering the lyrics a necessary, but essentially banal, part of the song’s meaning. This paper tries to rectify that fact, by focusing on the similarities and differences between traditional, written poetry and its popular form, pop and rock lyrics. The paper analyses the elementswhich constitute a poem’s (or a song’s) meaning and sound, such as its visual representation, its formal and metric features, figures of speech that focus on the aural dimension, or pronunciation of certain words. While similarities with dramatic works are also mentioned, the conclusion still remains that poetry is the form closest to pop and rock lyrics. Therefore, approaches that are traditionally used when nalysing written poetry, such as hermeneutic or intertextual, can undouubtedly be also used in the analysis of its popular counterpart, pop and rock lyrics.