There's pop in my poetry! There's poetry in my pop!

October 11, 2007 5:04 PM

Help me find other artists who combine poetry and music in interesting ways?

There are a number of artists who combine music and the poetic impulse in ways that lean towards the poetic in the performance: more talk, less singing; no choruses, probably. But also music! I think what interests me the most is talking in music? But also artists that play with the line between talking and singing. Here are some things I like in this vein:

All of BARR's music (like, for instance, "The Song is the Single").
Some of the Weakerthan's songs. Definitely "Elegy for Gump Worsley" and "(Hospital Vespers);" "History of the Defeated" to a lesser extent.
Laurie Anderson's Big Science.
Cap'n Jazz - Tokyo
William Shatner - That's Me Trying
The Mountain Goats - Going to Georgia
The Dismemberment Plan - The Ice of Boston

The Books' songs that use talky samples count, as does this song which uses answering machine messages over pretty guitars (and if you can tell me who does that song then I will love you).

Some things that you might be thinking of that I have considered but mostly discarded as not what I'm looking for, though I'm not against finding new interpretations of:
hip hop
spoken word w/ backing music
talking blues

Any ideas for more like this?

posted by wemayfreeze to media & arts (31 comments total)

captain beefheart
diamanda galas
x
lou reed / velvet underground
tom waits
posted by Rykey at 5:08 PM on October 11, 2007

i have a song you might want!

a friend of mine made/mixed it.
e-mail's in my profile if you want me to send it your way.
posted by gursky at 5:28 PM on October 11, 2007

Gil Scott Heron - THe REvolution Will Not Be Televised
posted by readery at 5:29 PM on October 11, 2007

Arab Strap.
posted by fire&wings at 5:29 PM on October 11, 2007

Veda Hille
posted by Rumple at 5:31 PM on October 11, 2007

Utah Philips, especially the stuff he did with Ani Difranco. Awesome.
posted by jbickers at 5:47 PM on October 11, 2007

Heh, I was planning on posting a question similar to this. The two examples I was going to use were
Thou Shalt Always Kill and Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Both pretty didactic, though.
posted by moonshine at 5:48 PM on October 11, 2007

Ken Nordine
posted by ciocarlia at 5:55 PM on October 11, 2007

The Hold Steady
posted by ludwig_van at 5:56 PM on October 11, 2007

Linton Kwesi Johnson, 'dub poet'.
posted by pompomtom at 6:10 PM on October 11, 2007

There's an entire genre called hip-hop you might consider looking into. :) MCs/groups with particularly interesting lyrics off the top of my head include: Lyrics Born, MF Doom, Aceyalone/Freestyle Fellowship, Digable Planets, Lootpack, Jurassic 5, Madlib/Quasimoto...
posted by badstone at 6:11 PM on October 11, 2007

Saul Williams?
posted by qz at 6:16 PM on October 11, 2007

The Sonic Youth song "Providence" features an answering machine message left by Mike Watt.

Speaking of Mike Watt, check out the Minutemen. "Do You Want New Wave of Do You Want the Truth?" and "History Lesson, Part II" are spoken, and "Take 5, D." is a recitation of a note from the landlord.
posted by hydrophonic at 6:20 PM on October 11, 2007

This is sort of the opposite of what you asked for, heh. But still worth considering. Joanna Newsom writes some of the most poetic lyrics I've ever heard from a song writer. Her voice is certainly unique (some can't stand it, I personally love it) but her lyrics are worth reading, if nothing else.
posted by apfel at 6:21 PM on October 11, 2007

Seconding Gil Scott Heron - all of his records on Flying Dutchman, Strata-East, and Arista (especially "Winter in America", "The First Minute of a New Day", and "Real Eyes") are well worth tracking down. The Last Poets are essential too, if GSH scratches your itch.

In the talking blues dept., Son House's recordings from the late 60s will probably be up your alley as well - esp. "Death Letter", "Grinning in Your Face" and "John the Revelator".
posted by ryanshepard at 6:52 PM on October 11, 2007

Wow, that answering machine track is great.

Do you actually not know where it came from?

I would have guessed it could be The Books or Godspeed You Black Emperor, but neither seems to be the case.

I was intrigued enough to try to look up some of the things mentioned in the messages:
---

For the two phone numbers given without an area code, it seems the area code is 586, which is in Michigan:

First sample
"calling from....office..to give you the dates of the test": 758-0390 -- a cardiologist's office

Middle bit from Bob Nelson: 264-2300, Bethesda Church, where "Bob/Phyllis Nelson" are in charge of "Senior Ministries."

-----

If you do know where it's from, do tell. If not, do post it as a separate question in the future.
posted by nobody at 6:53 PM on October 11, 2007

(wow, apologies for the ugly formatting; the live preview hides those aspects pretty well.)
posted by nobody at 6:55 PM on October 11, 2007

I second that nod for Saul Williams. You might want to rent his film 'Slam' first then check out his albums. Fwiw - his live performances are a hundred times better than the studio work.
posted by thankyoujohnnyfever at 7:12 PM on October 11, 2007

Moondog - Moondog Monologue (audio sample) -- Although I don't ever make it through all 8 1/2 minutes myself.
posted by hydrophonic at 7:26 PM on October 11, 2007

This was pretty much Soul Coughing's whole gig.

Also, the song Deus Ibi Est on Isobel Cambell (Belle and Sebastian) and Mark Lanegan's duet album "Ballad of the Broken Seas"
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 7:58 PM on October 11, 2007

From the department of "this is probably not what you're interested in" --

Allow me to introduce you to sprechtstimme, which is, according to Wikipedia, "an expressionist vocal technique that falls between singing and speaking." This technique is used extensively in Schoenberg's 1912 work, Pierrot Lunaire, that might be the most well-known example. It's weird-sounding.

A Googling for "sprechtstimme" gave a lot of promising-looking results.

Another way that poetry and music are combined is in art song. Art song is usually a setting of a literary poem -- that is, a poem written to be experienced as just a poem, not intended to be song lyrics. A composer interprets the poem musically. Usually this is for piano and voice, but often there are other instruments. Unlike with many other voice/piano forms, the piano part is just as intricate and expressive as the voice part; the piano doesn't "accompany" the voice, but both musicians are given equal attention.

I've seen art song settings of all kinds of poets: Dickinson, Shakespeare, Rabindranath Tagore, Goethe -- a lot of poets; here is the Lieder and Art Song Texts web site, which includes an index of art songs by poet -- look up your favorite and see what poems have been set. There are modern-sounding settings and there are older settings.

Lieder are German art songs; French art songs are often called Chansons.
posted by amtho at 7:58 PM on October 11, 2007

nobody: That song was put on an unlabeled mix for me by a friend years ago. I can probably track him down and ask, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Awesome detective work there!

apfel: JoNew is an all-time favorite of mine, and definitely hits some of the points I'm looking for. I'm definitely into the wordy stuff that barely or rarely rhymes, or maybe there's just so much between the rhymes that it only barely feels like a pop song.

badstone: Hmm. Hip ... hop? The name sounds familiar. But ferreals: obviously hip-hop is related, but I think I'm looking for something that plays more with singing and talking as opposed to rapping. I'm also very interested in things that let rhyming take a back seat (or a vacation), and hip hop tends to assert the primacy of the rhyme. I'm sure there's hip hop that gets at what I'm looking for, though, so if there's more specific stuff I'd love to hear it.

amtho: Cool stuff! I'll check it out, definitely. I think the art songs are right up my alley, though I've generally been looking for artists that try to do both at once. Thanks!

Thanks to everyone! Good stuff here. Keep 'em coming, if you got them. Here are some others that came to mind that fit the mold:

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
Steve Yerkey - Cadillacs of that Color
Tom Waits - "9th and Hennepin"
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:19 PM on October 11, 2007

Amtho, the sprechtstimme is wonderful! On some level it's really not what I'm looking for—not very poppy, yes?—but on another level it couldn't be more on target. Awesome.
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:30 PM on October 11, 2007

Sage Francis is spoken word/hip hop
Very cool stuff.
posted by idiotfactory at 11:55 PM on October 11, 2007

Joaquin Sabina.
posted by adamvasco at 12:43 AM on October 12, 2007

If its permissable—its a talky sample, recorded especially—I'd add Idlewild's "In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction", which towards the end of the song, features a recital of a poem by Edwin Morgan. It features on both The Remote Part and the very recently released Best Of.

This post has been a wikifest.
posted by Smoosh Faced Lion at 1:10 AM on October 12, 2007

The Little Red Songbook by Momus: spare, clever, idiosyncratic poems that are both sung and talked. Very Laurie Andersonish. No conventional song structure or choruses.

-- sample from "MC Escher, the impossible rapper" on that album [imagine this spoken in wry gentle skewed-hiphop rhythms over a jaunty Baroque-meets-Moog background]:

Conventions of rap dictate that every MC who takes the mic claims to be the best, fills his set with hype -- it's O.T.T.

But if we imagine a world where every MC really is badder than every other it just gets madder and madder, one of those rooftop salmon-ladders drawn by

MC Escher... [etc.]
posted by allterrainbrain at 2:17 AM on October 12, 2007

Eric Mingus
posted by Miko at 7:36 AM on October 12, 2007

"David Berman is an American poet, cartoonist, and singer-songwriter best known for his work with indie-rock band the Silver Jews."
posted by apostrophe at 8:29 AM on October 12, 2007

Also Leonard Cohen.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:00 AM on October 12, 2007

Jim Morrison "An American Prayer," Patti Smith, Jim Carroll. Hmm...I can't really think of anything past the 70's
posted by doppleradar at 11:14 AM on October 12, 2007