Best Love Song Lyrics With The Most Poetic Love Song Lyrics
In this post, I’ll share with you some of the most beautiful and poetic love song lyrics of all time. Please join me to this journey towards beauty, and let’s explore incredible music and poetry together!
Best Love Song Lyrics: Oh Michelangelo by Alex Genadinik
There are many incredible love songs by many poets, but I chose this song because of the song’s monumental ambitions, creative metaphors, and sensitivity.
The song itself reimagines Michelangelo’s painting The Birth of Adam as though it was a touch between two lovers instead of God and Adam.
The strongest and most romantic part of the song is this verse:
My fingers gliding along your silhouette.
You’re breathing with me – our souls have met.
Our eyes close as my fingers track
New Sistine Chapels along your back.
Here is a page with full lyrics and longer analysis of this song. Here is the full song:
This song is almost entirely all poetic lyrics. Here is a lyric from the bridge of the song:
And we surrender in ethereal sublime.
Where souls touch and forever intertwine.
One of my favorite parts of the song is the sensual and romantic opening.
Poets go mad describing the light you emanate.
For centuries they broke their quills, and now it’s my fate.
But I can paint you worlds with my caress.
So I touch the back of your shoulder as you undress.
This song is full of poetic fireworks. Please listen to the song, and pay attention to the lyrics.
Love Song Lyrics In A Song With Shakespeare’s Best Love Quotes
Shakespearean Rhapsody is a song that features some of Shakespeare’s best lines about love. My favorite is this one:
“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”
Once you see and think about this quote, you can’t unsee it. Sadly, everyone has contributed to that smoke with their own sighs. Here is the full song:
Summer’s Day Song With Lyrics Taken From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
Sonnet 18 is one of the most romantic and beautifully written sonnets. It features a timeless quote:
“Shall I compare you to a Summer’s day?”
This song uses that famous line as the hook in the chorus!
Here is a longer analysis and full lyrics of this upbeat love song. And here is the full song:
Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper
This is a very underrated song in the quality of its poetry. It builds on the metaphor of time ticking away, and weaves the time theme throughout the song.
It starts out by listening to time tick – almost hearing the time tick away in the doomed relationship she is in. And even though the man she is with will leave in a short amount of time, the chorus professes her timeless devotion she is capable of. It’s a great contrast.
There are many poetic moments in this song. This is a rare love song that could stand on its own as a pure poem and be regarded as a good poem.
The song ends with “the drum beats out of time” which is a thought-inspiring place to be.
Best Love Song Lyrics Inspired By Philosophy And The Question Of What Is Beauty?
When I attended university, I came across a philosophical question of “what is beauty?” It might seem easy to give examples of beauty. But even that is challenging because obviously different people regard different things as beautiful. But to define the word is even harder. Almost no definition of the word beauty has been philosophically satisfying in the entire history of philosophy.
I thought of this question for almost 20 years, trying to answer it. Then one day, it hit me: Beauty is that which inspires!
This is not a perfect definition, but it’s one that I really like, and with that definition in mind, I wrote these lyrics:
She’s beautiful cause she inspires.
She’s made for clouds, but walks through fires.
She’s sitting on a cloud for one.
Lonely, just kissed by the sun.
There is another lyric in this song that’s also inspired by my reading of philosophy.
Love’s in the space between two hearts.
Carried by winds that never let them part.
I like the idea that love is between two hearts and not in either of the people’s hearts. I also like the dreaminess that it’s carried by winds. You might recognize Shakespearean influence here from one of the songs above. Recall the quote “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” I use elements of it here when I say that love is carried by winds.
Here is a page with the full lyrics and longer analysis of this dreamy song, and here is the full song:
More Love Songs With Great Lyrics
I love artists like Leonard Cohen (best poet singer-songwriter in my opinion), Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. I wanted to choose their songs for this list, but many of their songs are not romantic. Instead, they are about topics like loneliness or breakups or heartbreak.
It’s understandable. Music needs tension. The lyrics in good love songs rarely just gush about how much the singer loves someone. Good songs usually thrive on tension to create strong emotions in the listeners.
If you can think of a romantic and poetic love song by these artists, please let me know.
Heart of Gold by Neil Young
This song has an incredible and memorable line:
“I’ve been searching for a heart of gold.”
It sounds like he has been looking for a woman with a heart of gold, but this line refers to him looking for a heart of gold in himself. In that, it’s profound.
New Or More Modern Love Song With Best Lyrics: I Give You All Of Me – John Legend
John Legend is the best of modern era songwriters to write a poetic love song. Too many modern songs have poorly-written lyrics. This song is about a tempestuous kind of love. Here are some of the interesting lyrics:
My head’s under water, but I’m breathing fine.
You’re crazy, and I’m out of my mind.
Cause all of me loves all of you.
Love your curves and all your edges,
Love your perfect imperfections.
More Thoughts On What Makes The Best Love Song Lyrics
In the perfect world, best song lyrics would also be the most poetic lyrics. But usually, they are not because first, the best musicians are not necessarily the best poets, and vice versa. But also, song lyric writing isn’t the same as poetry writing. They are similar, but not the same.
As a fan of poetry and a fan of great song lyrics, I wish more songs used beautiful and poetic song lyrics. In my view, that would elevate the emotional connection we have with most music. But today, most listeners don’t even pay much attention to the song lyrics.
If you are interested in reading more about the power of poetic song lyrics, I’ve written about the uses of imagery and metaphors in music, and how that makes songs better. Here is a blog post with a list of some of the most poetic songs ever.
Dance Me To The End Of Love by Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen has many other songs that are more poetic, but “dance me til the end of love” is a great hook for a song.
I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston
This song is perhaps most know for Whitney’s incredible vocal performance and the accompanying movie, but here I want to point out the great and underrated poetry of this song. There is a very subtle and sincere line in verse two:
Bittersweet memories,That is all I’m taking with me.
There are two nice things going on here. The first is the metaphor of taking a memory with you. It’s nice, but it commonly repeats in poetry, so it’s not too original. But what is original is that the singer doesn’t pretend to take happy memories like many love songs portend to. Instead, it’s bittersweet memories. That’s an interesting touch of vulnerability.
More Other Kinds Of Love Songs
This page contains mostly positive and happy love songs. But sad love songs are also interesting and emotional. In the realm of sad love songs, there are also songs about a crush, and as we all know, crushes rarely turn out happy for both people. And if you want to go down that rabbit hole further, here is a page with songs about toxic relationships.
