Reviewed by: The Poetry of Pop by Adam Bradley Eldonna L. May The Poetry of Pop. By Adam Bradley. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. [414 p. ISBN 9780300165029 (hardcover), $28; ISBN 97800300248326 (paperback), $22; ISBN 97800300165722 (e-book), price varies.] Illustrations, appendix, notes and credits, index. Adam Bradley’s book proposes that pop song lyrics are poetry. Certainly, there is a measure of truth to that statement, and he examines more than one hundred years of diverse popular song to prove it. Nothing is out of bounds in this investigation; Gershwin sidles up to James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Nirvana, Joni Mitchell, and Young Thug. In analyzing popular music, however, it is not always easy to find clear and convincing evidence of the poetic in a steady stream of melisma and fade endings. While I read Bradley’s The Poetry of Pop, the following words of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came to mind: “In an opera, poetry must necessarily be the obedient daughter of the music” (Letter to Leopold Mozart, 13 October 1781). It also raised the specter of Richard Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, and, finally, the thinly veiled wisdom of Aaron Copland’s essay, “How We Listen,” in What to Listen for in Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939). Like opera, the lyrics—poetry—of popular music demands our full sensory attention to be properly appreciated; as Mozart pointed out, however, poetry and music must work obediently and gracefully together. This is the thrust of Bradley’s book as he calls the reader’s attention to the little-used concept of poetic analysis in popular music. He makes the case that while listeners focus on the romanticized meaning of popular-song lyrics, they often ignore the finer details of the “libretto” and do not practice “active” or “critical” listening skills when evaluating song lyrics. Instead, they are swept away by the pathos of the words and not the ethos. He keenly observes in discussing Rihanna’s song “Diamonds” that “a poetic act that is also a musical one. One finds an art in equipoise” (p. 13). The book is cogently organized in tripartite fashion, initially consisting of three chapters encompassing the relationship between lyrics and melody; the often-neglected poetic nature of song lyrics and the distinction between lyric and narrative poetry; and the importance of poetic form as it relates to cognition insofar as the language of [End Page 408] literature is concerned. Part 2 focuses on rhythm and rhyme and these components’ relationship to musical accompaniment. In discussing rhythm, Bradley raises the issue of tempo rubato in both poetic and musical phrasing from the classical perspective in juxtaposition with singers Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and Willie Nelson. The thoughtful inclusion of Jerry Wexler’s observation that “the art of gliding over the meter and extending it until you think they’re going to miss the next actual demarcation” (p. 98) serves as an excellent example of the ways in which popular music artists enhance the relationship between words and music through vocal delivery—a device that listeners have both come to expect and take for granted. In this section, too, Bradley enters into a lengthy discussion of both the concept and history of rhyme. His thoughtful commentary concerning the timeline of lyric poetry and its absence in modern literature and song is beneficial to both educators and researchers in teaching and analyzing modern/popular song because it effectively explains the reasons for devices such as slant rhyme as well as the abandonment of rhyme by some songwriters altogether. In this section, Bradley takes us on a detailed songwriter’s journey including Samuel Francis Smith’s “God Save the King” (1832), the Beatles’ “Michelle” (1965), the Hollies’ “Stop, Stop, Stop” (1966), and Alison Krauss and Robert Plant’s “Raising Sand” (2007), discussing the relative merits and features of each song, the relationship between rhyme, rhythm, and music, and the artistic equation that led to such successful songs. One of the most interesting chapters in part 2 is devoted to the use of figurative language. This section in particular should be required reading for every vocal-music student because it includes an in-depth discussion of the use...
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Oct 14, 2024
Adrian Năznean 
Open Access