When talking about his songwriting, Kurt Cobain was once said "music comes first and lyrics come second." Most songwriters and music fans place the importance of a song's music over its lyrical content, but there are some singers whose lyrics are actually the best parts of their songs. Here are five artists whose lyrics are better than their music.
1. Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan would likely be the first person to tell you that the main draw of his songs are the lyrics, rather than the melodies or musical performances. He's not a great guitarist (his strumming on "Like a Rolling Stone" is pretty choppy), and while he can write a beautiful melody when he wants to ("Mr. Tambourine Man"), he was basically shouting his lyrics by the time his electric phase rolled around. Highway 61 Revisited is still one of my favorite albums, but if I had to choose between the music and the lyrics for "Tombstone Blues," I'd take the lyrics.
2. The Mountain Goats
John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has been frequently called the best lyricist in America, and rightfully so, but if there was ever a lyricist whose music I just didn't get, it's him. It's not so much that there's anything to "get" about his music actually, since it's pretty simple and non-descript, but his lyrics are so phenomenally human and emotional that his melodies and chord sequences simply can't compete.
3. Patti Smith
As I mentioned in an article I wrote yesterday, New York punk pioneer Patti Smith is primarily a poet and lyricist, leaving her music to be written by the members of her band. The music isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but because of Smith's focus on lyricism, the songs are purposely kept simple and repetitive, written as a soapbox for Smith to sing her poetry on. The best example of this is the epic "Land," a nine-minute song of just three chords but over 1,000 words.
4. The Replacements
The greatest lyricist in the entire American indie underground of the '80s was Paul Westerberg of the Replacements. The desperation in his songs makes him sound like the Midwestern punk version of Bruce Springsteen, and though the Replacements' music was frequently excellent, the quality of Westerberg's lyrics was the band's most consistent element. The band's classic ballad "Here Comes a Regular" is easily one of my top 10 greatest lyrics ever written.
5. Lou Reed
During his time as the primary songwriter for the Velvet Underground, the music in Lou Reed's songs was just as extreme and groundbreaking as his lyrics. His music after going solo, however, is a different story. Though his early solo work like the Transformer album still had typically excellent lyrics and catchy songs, the quality of the music itself never again reached his Velvet Underground zenith. Even his disastrous Lulu LP with Metallica has some really fascinating lyrical content, but the words would have been much better served in a book of poetry.
