Let's Talk English: Are Song Lyrics Literature?
By Dr JT Welsch, University of York
When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, the awarding committee said it was ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.’ In the official press announcement, they added: ‘He can be read and should be read, and is a great poet in the English tradition.’ It’s one thing to describe song lyrics as ‘poetic’ – a vague descriptor we apply to many creative forms. It’s another thing to call someone who is primarily a songwriter a ‘poet’ while awarding them the world’s most prestigious prize for ‘literature’.
The committee surely knew they would provoke debate. The New York Times described it as ‘perhaps the most radical choice’ ever for the literature prize, and other media outlets contributed countless think-pieces on the subject. I recall heated debates with colleagues at the time, mostly centred on whether awarding the Nobel to a popular songwriter diverted attention (and prize money) that might have gone to a less commercially successful poet, novelist, or playwright—in other words, from ‘real’ literature.
Such debates operate on two levels. Conceptually, the question of whether song lyrics qualify as ‘literature’ is inflected by values we attach to that label. In his classic essay ‘What is Literature?’ Terry Eagleton argues that literature can never be an ‘“objective”, descriptive category’ (and ‘does not exist in the sense that insects do’), but is continually shaped by value-judgements that are ‘historically variable’ and influenced by ‘social ideologies’. This is clearly reflected in debates surrounding Dylan’s Nobel.
Great expectations
At another level, as a teacher of ‘literature’, I see this as a more practical matter. When students enrol in a literature degree, what do they expect to study? They likely have their own idea of what ‘literature’ is, and although it seems right to consider the historical and social contexts informing this understanding, students also quite rightly anticipate reading some actual literature. Furthermore, they reasonably expect to learn something new about that category—something that will enhance their experience and understanding of it.
So, when I conclude my introductory lecture on ‘Reading Poetry’ to new undergraduates with a close analysis of Olivia Rodrigo’s song ‘Vampire’, am I breaking these expectations? Or worse, am I pandering, with what might seem like an easier form of writing? I think about this in relation to our practical terms of analysis. Part of what makes us so passionate about what qualifies as ‘literature’ is the perception that it is less technical or less reliant on specific expertise than, for instance, STEM subjects. It isn’t ‘rocket science’ or ‘brain surgery’, as the idioms go.
Tools for reading
Within literary study, poetry analysis comes closest to having its own scientific language. When I teach students about iambs or amphibrachs, sibilance or anaphora, or how a medial caesura functions in an alexandrine or hexameter, I worry that such jargon is precisely what makes people think poetry requires expert knowledge or training to appreciate. ‘I’m just giving you some tools you might use for reading,’ I insist. ‘It’s up to you whether you find these terms useful.’ It’s a tricky balance: I don’t want to alienate them, but I want to give them something practical that changes how they think about language.
Personally, songwriting has always been a bridge for this. I never enrolled on a literature degree, but attended a music school where technical knowledge of our chosen art form was taken for granted. Four semesters of jazz theory were mandatory, alongside many modules in classical composition. No one questioned the idea that knowing the function of half-diminished seventh chords or the rules of traditional counterpoint would deepen our understanding of music. When I finally had the chance to take a poetry workshop, I was excited to find a comparable language for an art form I had mostly enjoyed intuitively. Learning about prosody from Paul Fussell’s Poetic Form and Poetic Meter was as thrilling as learning how upper structures or sub 5s could enrich my listening and playing.
Why poetry and song lyrics aren’t the same – and why it doesn’t matter.
Poetry and song lyrics aren’t the same. According to Pat Pattison, who taught both my lyric-writing and poetry workshops: ‘Poetry is made for the eye. Lyrics are made for the ear.’ As he notes, this general distinction has many practical implications. However, I often joke that my module on ‘Songwriting: Lyrics as Literature’ is mainly a sneaky way of teaching students about poetic analysis. I want them to have that same eye-opening moment when they see how the asymmetrical rhythms and shifting assonance give way to the alliterative plosives and falling metre in the chorus of Rodrigo’s ‘Vampire’, adding to its drama. I want them to see how literary analysis can build upon their often extensive and intricate knowledge of song lyrics, whatever their opinions on whether these qualify as ‘literature’.