Reading Song Lyrics

Explores how popular songs are analysed, emphasising an interdisciplinary approach to understanding their multimodal nature, from lyrical storytelling and listener interpretation to cultural significance and the impact of visuals

Popular song is an art form which reaches far beyond the music itself, and to fully appreciate its impact, the modern critic needs to analyse the elements that we find outside the song as well as those they find within it.

This book will provide an exploration of how popular songs have been analysed in the past, before detailing how an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to appreciate the multimodal format of the medium. Beginning by examining what we can gain from staying ‘inside’ the song, it will explore the role the listener has in determining meaning within a song, before moving on to how, through their lyrics, songwriters can persuade their audience to react in the desired ways. Lyrical storytelling will also be analysed, in terms of the narratives we find within individual songs, but also through ‘song sequences’ where the story spans multiple songs across different projects, and also the ‘concept album’ format. As we move ‘outside’ the song, we see what can be offered in terms of cultural significance, the difference between real events and their lyrical representations, how the format we listen to music in influences our readings, and to what extent visual materials affect our relationships with songs.