Top 6 Songwriters

Ahead of next week's Portsmouth Poetry Society meeting on the subject of Song Lyrics, I've been giving it some thought. For those of us for who pop music began with Move Over Darling by Doris Day, or anywhere near it, there's plenty of it and would be enough for a whole new society rather than an evening. I first thought I'd be betting without classical composers but we mustn't do that, we must answer the question. However, I have reframed it to songwriters, which includes the tune, rather than just the words.

Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which prompted some debate and consternation. Of course, being Dylan, he had to be difficult about it but found time to accept it in the end. I'd have preferred it if he could have stuck by his principles having once said that Smokey Robinson was the real poet among pop song writers. That was the right answer.

 

Tamla Motown overflowed with talent organized into the production line in the hit factory that ensured huge commercial success on the back of artistic excellence, which wasn't always the way in pop music. As well as Smokey, the engine roon was driven by Holland-Dozier-Holland, Brian, Lamont and Eddie, who provided Berry Gordy's quality control with a job as enjoyable as wine taster. The question for them was who to give the best songs to and the answer was usually Diana Ross & the Supremes.

 

My interest in pop music was extended longer than it might have been by being introduced to The Magnetic Fields and the potent combination of heartbreak and dark satire in the songs of Stephin Merritt. I suspect he's not quite the force he was 20 years ago and the songs up to and including 69 Love Songs, and more beyond, but he was a once-in-a-lifetime tip from a friend to who I've been grateful ever since.

For many people Lennon-McCartney would be a no-brainer selection as obvious as Shakespeare would be for a list of people who wrote plays but having set themselves a very high standard they went on to indulge themselves and live off their reputation a little bit which might seem harsh but there's not much room in a top 6 and Burt Bacharach provided the foundations for any number of 1960's artists that possibly amount to more.

 

The second, third and fourth divisions would be easy to fill with great writers that the proper rules of a Top 6 don't allow me to namedrop here and so I've only got one space left and even I don't know who I'm going to give it to yet.

 

But, no, I can't do it. It will have to remain, in such difficult circumstances, that elite Top 4. It was going to be Carole King and Mozart, for his sublime arias that he did the music for but the Italian words wewre by Lorenzo da Ponte and the German by Emanuel Schikaneder, but the original question was Song Lyrics and perhaps it's not for me to re-write it.

So I admit defeat in the face of the choice between Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, Dory Previn, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, some memorable 'dab hand' efforts by Rod Stewart, the great Newcastle poet, Alan Hull, and the extraordinary reading list that would come about if we did have a Portsmouth Song Lyrics Society. If we had world enough and time which, sadly, I don't think we do.