Examples Of The Most Poetic Song Lyrics, And What Makes Great Song Lyrics

Song lyrics can be mysterious to understand. If you ask ten different people what makes great song lyrics, you’ll get ten different answers.

For our needs, to be considered poetic, the lyrics should be imaginative, not too literal, and use interesting imagery.

Poetic Song Lyrics That Use Shakespeare’s Poetry

After all, Shakespeare is considered by many to be the best poet in world history. One of his best and most romantic poems is Sonnet 18. That sonnet contains this incredible line:

“Shall I compare you to a Summer’s day? You are more lovely in every way.”

I weaved this line into an original song of mine. Below, you can listen to that song on YouTube. Here is a page with full lyrics and a longer poetic analysis of this upbeat love song.

Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man

This song has incredibly imaginative and eloquently expressed imagery. Here is my full blog post with a more thorough analysis of how brilliant the lyrics are in this song.

Here is just one verse from this masterpiece:

Though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah

Just like Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man, this is an epic that spans millennia. Leonard Cohen evokes king David and God himself in contrast to the uninspiring and uninteresting woman he had fallen out of love with.

You can listen here to the full song:

Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin

Led Zepplin aren’t known as a poetic band, but Stairway To Heaven features incredibly vivid imagery. You can literally picture a naive lady who has her values all mixed up, and thinks that all that matters is gold. Just about everyone knows someone like that. It’s not only an interesting image, but it’s poignant to life. For more songs with unique and poetic imagery, check out this post on enchanting imagery in songs, and this one with a collection of music that uses incredible metaphors.

You can listen to the full song here:

Sound of Silence by Simon And Garfunkel

This song is so poetic that you don’t even need to listen to the lyrics to start interpreting the poetry. The title alone has incredible mystique, riddle, and imagery.

What is “the sound of silence?” Is it the sound of loneliness? Or not speaking up when there are injustices? Maybe it’s the silence between people, and their inability to communicate with each other or give each other the necessary warmth. There is so much there already!

Once you start thinking about the lyrics of this masterpiece, you start wondering what “to the neon signs they preyed” means in relation to the loneliness, isolation, and loss of meaningfulness.

The Boxer by Simon And Garfunkel

The lyrics of this song discuss loneliness, and all its hopelessness, especially with these lyrics:

Asking only workman’s wages, I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on 7th Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there

Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell

The very first words of this song are “Rows and flows of angel hair.” It might not seem like much, but “flows” isn’t a word in the English language that’s used this way. Joni just casually and almost effortlessly created a new meaning and a new use for that word. While such bending of language is interesting, it isn’t the main focus on this song’s lyrics.

As the lyrics progress, they paint a picture of the author’s growth without full realization of things. In the beginning, it might have been an inability to interpret clouds, later in life it was an inability to make sense of relationships, and life itself. It’s a painting of self-doubt without actually saying the word “self-doubt.”

If you want deeper analysis of poetry, here is a blog post that focuses on such deeper poetic analysis.

Additional Poetic Song Lyrics

If you like this post, you might also like this similar post about the best lyric poetry examples.

Why Song Lyrics Don’t Have To Be Great Poetry

This is the million-dollar question. Song lyrics feel like they are poetry. But they don’t have to be as potent as a stand-alone poem because a stand-alone poem can only work if the poetry in it is amazing.

On the other hand, a song can have mediocre lyrics or just one or two lines or actual good poetry, and still feel poetic and make us emotional. That is because a song can be emotional via other means usually through the musical production, melody composition, or the vocalist’s performance.

There are many songs that feel poetic, but actually feature very little good poetry.

Poetic Songs That Build A Theme With Imagery

Here is an example of a song starts with a pretty idea:

“Whisper like a gentle stream. Carry me into your dream.”

We are introduced to the image of a lover’s whisper that’s like a gentle stream. That’s pretty in itself, but as this song goes on, it builds on this stream/river/sailing metaphor.

Here is the chorus which brings back references of how this woman sailed away, and I am on a lonely shore:

Together we made one.

She sailed away – now gone.

What was it for?

I’m on a lonely shore.

A little later in the song, we see the image of a shipwreck. It’s within our nautical theme, but a world apart from the image of the gentle stream. Here are these lyrics:

She’s shipwrecked – veered off course.

I’m not far, she can’t see – of course.

She peers into distance.

Sees her own resistance.

There is more sailing imagery in this song, but I think it’s clear how throughout the song, there are new images on the same theme, which reinforces the main metaphor of this song. In the end of the song, I use a book-ending type of reference where I recall that original image of the gentle stream:

You whispered like a stream.

Now I’m a broken dream.

It all ties together nicely like a bow. This is an example of a song having one major theme with many metaphors and images reinforcing and enriching that theme as the song goes on.

Here is a page with the full lyrics and longer analysis of this song.

All Songs Have At Least Some Poetry – But How Good Is It?

For example, let’s take one of the most popular songs of all time: What A Wonderful World. This song feels poetic, but if you just read the lyrics, there is very little good poetry, and everything is described quite literally as a child might do it. But when it’s performed by a great vocalist who emphasizes the right ideas, this song blossoms into one of the best songs of all time.

Best Song Lyrics

The best song lyrics are not necessarily the most poetic ones. The best lyrics are ones that elevate the song and give it extra depth and dimensions. For sad songs, these might be lyrics that portray sad imagery, and for energetic songs, it might be lyrics that portray inspiring and energizing imagery. Here is my blog post with a collection of songs that have the best and most effective song lyrics.

My Tribute Song To Poets And Artists

I am forever grateful to the poets who put passion into their work to inspire me and everyone else. They are truly the guardians of souls, and because of that, here is a song I wrote as a tribute to them. Here is a page with full lyrics for this song and a longer analysis.