Artists whose lyrics are actually a joy to read on the printed page. And examples if you wish.

Because Dylan lyrics REALLY do sound better within the context of music and his voice. You know? But who can you happily read? and even better, read aloud?

The answer is not Lou Reed.

Half Man Half Biscuit lyrics are a TREAT to read.

"Although upon reflection I’ve been a trifle green
I still think with affection on everything that’s been
So prepare that fatted calf
And string up the bunting gay
Your brisk and bonny ploughboy is coming home today
And tonight he’ll be sitting on top of Lord Hereford’s Knob
Tonight he’ll be sitting on top of Lord Hereford’s Knob
On touching the trig point, I found my thrill
To the east Brokeback Mountain, to the west, Benny Hill
I’ll give you the grid ref, you might like to go
SO224350"

also, tom t. hall.

are there any other artists who did the Morrissey thing of printing their lyrics on the record sleeves with certain words and phrases CAPITALISED or in italics to make them read better on the page? it seemed like a lot of the time the emphasis was in different places to the sung version. (I think maybe Gene did this as well?)

Neil Peart, particularly from 1976 to about 1985.

the venga boys

An awful lot of Thinking Fellers lyrics are just wonderful on the page. I was surprised when I first read, had assumed it would be some Sonic Youth level drivel. I'll have to do some cut and pasting...

getting out in front of the inevitable crush of dudes:

kristin hersh:

I feel the tug of war, I fight the fight
but I don't have the patience or the stamina to last one night
with color-mad candy mouth you

Your reputation lives in spite of me
Your platitudes and berserk theories, super-real fantasy
That infuriating vanishing twin

He has metal bones and a wild-eyed stare
I'm thinking feigning interest, badly, like a liar
And then he blows me away

And then all I want is a room and you
The urban hillside glinting copper in the morning
A broken spell, alive and well

That's the way the cookie bounces, in spite of me
I hate clever sons-of-bitches who can't leave a girl alone, to rot in peace

You can fizz out the top or settle to the bottom or stand still inside a liquid life.

You can float away or melt into the ground, but scientists can watch you through the glass and measure forces pulling you, and measure forces pushing you, until you stand still and make the shadows stop.

Vaporize, solidify. Hummingbird in a cube of ice.

Tful282

Excuse me sir, I'd like to buy a spike for planting hornets in the heart of my wife. She's had conversations with my darker side. Now she's left me with a poisoned mind.

She has a hornet's heart.

I care for her so. It saddens me to know she knows that I'd cook her to keep her warm. When she saws her saw-like call and asks me if I caught it all, I let slip I love her so, I'd cook her to keep her warm.

She has a hornet's heart.

Tdul282

carol keogh:

The internal life of animals is something I know
Are you waiting to leave? Are you packing to go?
Cover tracks; make your camp here
Draw the crossbow to your chest
And with the calibrated arrow give me the rest

See the beast rising upwards to the heat and raging flies
From the stream that knows no better than the carcass

The internal life of animals is something I know
Are you waiting to leave? Are you packing to go?
Cross the lines; cross your heart twice
Put the heart crossways on me
Be the hunted and the hunter, in symmetry

And the beast is beholden to the words that sing its life
And the song will make a rattle of the carcass

There is nothing left, none to feed relations
No one left, none to mow the lawns

Quantify love; tell me I'm wrong
Show the ledger
Quantify me, tell what you see

The internal life of animals is something I know
Make friends with all your old selves
And let them go

Tful282, sorry. K. Hersh has a bunch of doozies as well, many on Sunny Border Blue.

Mark Eitzel, a lot of the time. This is The Confidential Agent, which is one of his most overlooked songs:

Take the velvet line for comfort
High above the water, feel disconnected and free
Tired of hopes that I just can't run from
I travel in secret, I know they're pursuing me

Morning that falls represents a weak link
After is after night's work is done
There's no sun, just a gray horizon
Hiding from heaven, another frozen world

Watch the ship hold to its course
As an act of devotion
And me, I'm lost at sea
Going through the motions

Gave all my passion to the ocean
She holds it for me in reserve
My word is gone into remission
Your love's a tragedy that I don't deserve

She said, "You're only growing now"
She said, "Soon have we begun
Then she can have you
But until then you're mine"

I watch her hold to her course
As an act of devotion
And me, I'm riding high
Going through

Seems like every flash in her eye's
An act of devotion
And me, I'm lost in her hands
Going through the motions

Shore far away off the port side
Shore far away off the bow
Shore far away off the starboard side
Shore far away from now

stina nordenstam:

On cold days it is easy to behave, and easy to believe in it
On cold days it is easy to see clear, and easy to believe in it
You say winter's killing you, that you can't stand the season, it has no smell or flavor
I left the city for you, there was no other reason, I did your wife a favour

You're safer with me here, and you there

I took the fast track, considered crying
I was stopped in customs
Quite proud of the knack I have of knowing when it's over

With a bit of ice under my clothes, my tongue against the teeth, I think of nothing
Walk around the house on the cold till it hurts to breathe
I think of nothing
I knew I had to leave, 'cause spring was coming
You'd made a lover out of me, and spring was coming

You can finally understand Guy Kyser lyrics properly if you see them written.

my copy of Secrets of the Beehive has an advert for a printed volume of David Sylvian's lyrics that you could purchase, I love Sylvian but can't imagine his lyrics would work that well on the printed page? does anyone own the book?

Darby Crash:

Land of treason - waste no reason
we are breathing fire
We're packs of dogs - we're enemies of men
we are not desired
Our faces show - we've grown cold
but have not conspired
Old hearts gone - the suture's on
mother nations mired
I like a receptacle for the chosen dead
we find our bodies clawed
And with the scent of death, we find that
we are not so very awed

Loyalties burned- the words are blurred
overturn your own
Walk the dogs and watch the doors
have your other stone
Stop the toys that march disordered
calculate the thrones
Feel the pulse descending
decaying hallowed tomes
In the starving sense you worship
the nations of debris
You wear a cost of sewage
that you've never even seen

The time is now- the vicious here
a stolen dinner code
The licence of the savage land
that you've always sold
So bite the hand that needs you
and bless another coal
The virus never issues
from a cotton so very old
As the lights come down and the guilty blaze;
another sort of road
You wash your hands and start to climb
the ladder that you stole

Slip the latch- and spin the sword
the money lords are poor
Push the tank- that rolls downhill
their sense of doom absorbed
Still the cat that breaks the night
tie him to the core
Chase the virtue that believes
that what's right is scored
It's a senseless cash in of right for right
what's wrong is never gone
And left is just a bastion
for the fools golden dawn

i used to have it, it didn't feel particularly necessary (the sylvian book)

The Handsome Family.

I am afraid of bridges. Sometimes I have to turn around when I'm driving towards one and my heart begins to pound. Last night at the bridge to Johnsburg I swerved down a dead end street. I sat there shaking in an empty lot full of broken glass and weeds. Then past me in the darkness ran four wild dogs leaping over abandoned tires high into the air. In the air, in the air, someday I will live in the air. Once I loved a girl named Joan whose skin smelled just like falling snow. One day she drove us off the road into a dead field of corn. She laughed and hit the gas as we bounced across the rows, but I held onto the dashboard with my eyes tightly closed. Those wild dogs brought back that smell of falling snow and the girl who lives in Johnsburg across a bridge I can not cross.

The Cathedral in Cologne looks like a spaceship, like the hand of God falling from the sky. 1,000 stone-carved saints hang like icicles, but icicles don't take 1,000 years to die. And everyone who ever worked on this cathedral or even spent a moment walking by, everyone of us is swept away like breadcrumbs. What comfort does it bring, soaring towers left behind? There's a fiberglass castle in Wisconsin where kids race go-karts around a moat. Once we went up there in December when every water-slide and fudge shop was closed. Hoping to feel love under the icicles. All we did was drink in an empty bar. But, stumbling drunk we crawled back to our motel room and I fell against you and felt your beating heart. Snow was slowly falling on the ice machine and the moon shone hazy through the pines. But, there were lounge chairs thrown into the empty pool and a dog chained to a tree barking at the sky.

Kurt Wagner

And as your hand rests gently on her head
Remove the clutter and the papers that you read
A whispered comment, or a compliment is said
And you take her hand and you gesture toward the bed
I can't believe this feels this good
No, I can't believe this feels this good

No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no limit!

i've really been digging courtney barnett lately but she is another dylan-y person where without the phrasing and her voice it can look kinda clunky on the page.

Beefheart. Syd Barrett.

When the moon shines on the cow shed
and we're rolling in the hay,
All the cows are up there grazin'
and the milk is on its way.

We're having a gang bang
We're having a ball
We're having a gang bang
Against the wall
We'd like you to join us
It's part of the fun!
Oh a gang bang is the thing to do
But it takes more than one

Sur le trottoir d’en face, une fille riait
Et ses dents blanches me creusèrent la faim
Je courus au boulanger m’acheter un petit pain
Et tout en le beurrant je pense aux paysans.

Paysans, dès lors décision est prise
Oui, j’irai, j’irai à travers la campagne
Offrir aux paysans dix ans de ma jeunesse
Connaître leur sort, leurs durs travaux des champs.

Oui nos champs n’ont rien de commun avec leur ranch
Ici pas de charrue ni de tracteur zélé
La hache dès le point du jour, on avance puis on brûle
C’est pas pour plaire aux yeux mais pour mieux faire pousser le café.

Du café oui du café ne vous en étonnez pas
Les amis nous ont dit qu’il n’est pas compétitif
Néanmoins le soir venu faut chasser grosses bêtes
On allume des grands feux, on tape dans des tonneaux.

Des tonneaux vieux, vides de mauvais vin
Qu’on nous avait filé les dernières élections
Croyez-moi la nuit venue, on oublie bien vite ce vin
Quand sur son tam-tam, Ogula nous fait danser

« Arrêtez de danser sales nègres, arrêtez ! »
C’est un prospecteur, un boucher recyclé
C’est sur un gisement d’or, nous explique le salaud,
Que nous dansions depuis des générations.

« Go home, sale colon » fis-je coup sur coup
Il comprit alors que je suis un intellectuel
« Chut, me fit le con, je suis de la croix noire
Pour l’intérêt des noirs – d’ailleurs je t’écrirai »

M’écrire ? Il tint promesse, il le fit bientôt
« J’ai l’honneur, le plaisir….vous êtes conseiller »
Adieu cochons et vaches, je m’en retourne là-bas
Dans ces coins publics où paissent les grands messieurs.

Conseiller ? Je fus un peu étonné, mais enfin
On s’adapte, il faut dire que je signe fort bien
Mais s’épuisent les gisements d’or, tarissent les amitiés
Mon mandat fut très court, mesures d’austérité.

Sur le trottoir d’en face, une fille riait
Et ses dents blanches me prédisent la faim
Je cours au boulanger comme tout bon patriote
Mais plus de boulanger, il est presque député.

You know that people they are driftin' from do' to do'
But they can't find no heaven
I don't care where they go

People, if I ever can get up
Off a-this old hard killin' flo'
Lord, I'll never get down
This low no mo'

Well, you hear me singin'
This old lonesome song
People, you know these hard times
Can't last us so long

You know, you'll say you had money
You better be sho'
But these hard times gon' kill you
Just drive a lonely soul

Well it's down the road and up the hill and just around the bend
Pick 'em and put 'em down and pick 'em up again
Cadd9
And it sets me into wonderin' what it's really all about
Fightin' for the things we know we'll always be without

Down the road by the way
Where the laughin' waters play
'Cross the ribbon-wavin' sand
We go walkin' hand in hand

Nothin' old and nothin' new
Nothin' special there to do
In those good old yesterdays
Down the road by the way

Well it's light and lovely Brenda comin' cool across the waves
Floatin' over rows she helped me hoe in yesterdays
And it's me whose thirsty now for all that sweet milk gone to waste
Somewhere on the road of no returnin' yesterdays

Well it's down the road and up the hill and just about the bend
Pick 'em and put 'em down and pick 'em up again
And it sets me into wonderin' what it's really all about
Fightin' for the things we know we'll always be without

xxp yeah if I limited it to one-liners then I would fill the thread with lines from kristin hersh ("I don't know where I am. I don't even know when I am, 'cause you insist on using fucked-up military time!")

it also took a great deal of restraint not to fill the thread with 75% of these http://www.irishmusiccentral.com/tychonaut/lyrics-love-life.html

Anything by Will Sheff.

A black sheep boy grows horns, breathing smoke through his microphone.
The airwaves stretch and they groan, bleeding, birthing his black diapason.
He says “there’s plenty of things to wear when you come to me,
every color of sleeve to be rolled.
There are millions of rolling eyes that still cling to me.
Every language of king is concerned.
So why did you bawl from the spell of some old holy song,
that some liar laughed as he composed - some liar I loved to control?”

Bid's stuff always reads like poetry

(Alphaville) She slits her senseless skin
(Alphaville In time to Fred Astaire
(Alphaville) I know you're always there

(Don't look now) She's so debonair, she's a manic depressive
(Don't look now) She's a millionaire, and her bills are excessive

(Alphaville) She feels her senses wane
(Alphaville) In pleasant melody
(Alphaville) I'll take you now with me

(Don't look now) She's a movie star, she's a split personality
(Don't look now) She's got oom-pah-pah, and Papa says it's insanity

Don't look now, your mind's deteriorating
Don't look now, and if it's irritating
I'll know how to set it right again

Don't look now, your world's collapsing, dear
Don't look now, and if it's taxing, dear
I'll know how to put it back again

(Alphaville) She sleeps in useless flesh
(Alphaville) The rancid, blood-soaked breast
(Alphaville) In sunlight and slow death

(Don't look now) She's a movie star, she's a little bit touched
(Don't look now) She's so wünderbar, all gears and no clutch

Grand Belial's Key and Arghoslent (same lyricst, I think)

Fugitive
Witch-doctor
Born in an impoverished stable
Could this flimsy child truly be an predicted scepter?

Balaam's prophecy, Judah's predictions
Artificial pages of an unearthly fetish
Interpreter of the Torah
Worshipped by the Magi of Arabia

Hobo of Aramaic Tongues

The outline of a dead fish on a wall of mud
Signs of the resistance

Hobo of Aramaic Tongues

Frauds, hoaxes, serpents of Earth
Surviving on quails and manna
Christmas star of a frozen Palestine
Saturn no longer protects thee
...

JoeStork beat me to it but Handsome Family to thread

Craig Finn:

"She came to in a confession booth, infested with infections, smiling on an abscessed tooth. She climbed the cross, found she liked the view and sat reflecting on the Resurrection. She put her mouth around a difficult question. She said, "Lord, what do you recommend to a real sweet girl who's made some not sweet friends? Lord, what would you prescribe to a real soft girl who's having real hard times?""

Can we all please just calm the fuck down?

In an analogy that makes sense to most
This opportunity, it found me unmarked at the far post
But I blazed it right against the crossbar
Of the pub that you had worked in since you moved here from Bath spa
We agreed we couldn't trust the guy that didn't like a single sport
But those bow-legged suitors hadn't given me much of a thought
They said it smelled delicious, but it smelt of burning flesh
Not meant to be malicious but this is the cross we bear

The story of the winter I forgot how to speak my mind was like a nation's flag, but my breeze was too weak
How they dragged me to the hospital saying I had gone deaf
But I heard everything they said
It's just I had no interest

Our friends have put the two of us on suicide watch
And every second spent away we spend watching the clock
There are photos of us holding hands outside of the frame
I was there, but wonder where our fingers were all the same
It's like a self-restraint
It's the size of a fingernail
And then we chew it down
Yeah we chew it down all the same
Sad eyes for sad goodbyes
It's a crime, it's a crime, it's a crime, it's a crime

First and foremost, let it be said
I am writing this at 7:10 am
On the hard dry tarmac of a vacant forecourt
Astronomically speaking, it's the first day of autumn
But the sun is hanging round like summer's hungover
They'll knock the garage down and build flats where I sit
The traffic's so persistent that it barely registers
And it smells like a mix between petrol and dog shit

Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back
I just sighed, the universe replied: "let this pass you by"

Sometimes it's just enough to know I keep him on his toes
Is he as sympathetic as me to the untimely demise of your synthetic clothes?
I've displayed marriage proposals on the Jumbotrons of ballgames you've not been at
I've written eulogies in guestbooks of galleries in the hopes that you might pass

She: nervous and barefoot, chats to me at the front door
He: boyfriend, inside's a saint, becoming a martyr
Me: rolling, writhing on the floor, stared daggers pulled from my thoracic wall
When I hold sea shells to my ears, I'm pretty sure I can hear you

He gave a gift of the Faber Book of Love Poems
Annotated the ones he thought applied the most
Not gonna win you round with prose
If anyone should know then it's I should know (Oh-oh)
Girl, there must be a reason you let it slip
Went to the point of sending the message
Six months of visceral Catherine Wheels
Kissing carnivores to make it seem like less of a deal

I promise after this I will pick up the phone book
And choose the name that my eyes fall upon on their first look
Aim all of my poorly composed declarations there in the future
I'm so sorry to have to put you through a lifetime of dedications that you never desired
But this one sentence bludgeons me over the head
(Okay) I'm a little bit drunk, and I mean just a little bit
No lush in denial, only rather coquettish
I'm fifteen years old and my parents' only son
Like I barely survived a girls' school education
Prettier now that you've grown your hair long
I'm a slip of a man since I cut mine all off

Please just let me be the one to keep track
Of the freckles and the moles on your back

Shit, also anything Dickon wrote, especially the first Fosca album.

And OBVIOUSLY the entire catologue of John D.

I dreamt the film of my life as directed by Joseph Losey
It was eight minutes long, and cast as me was Parker Posey
It had a limited run in the small hours on Channel Four
And all of my scenes ended up on the cutting room floor
Because from Stockholm to Bolton they're coming to Soho in droves
For a sniff of some "face" whose skin barely touches his clothes
There's little more to your name but a cool, sharp, three-button pose
Ordering drinks with a flick of your famed button nose

I'm bereft, I don't have a single secret left
You traded them for every friendship's death
Of which you're a millionaire
If truth be told, I only wanted something for my cold
I blame the lure of the laissez-faire
That you're the millionaire of your own hair
I left my last social circle and I hid for a while
I worked in an undertaker's so I wouldn't have to smile
There's five weeks' worth of homework nestling under your bed
While between the sheets skulks a grateful deputy head
After Double French you silently slip your moorings
And kill an hour or two in town defacing catalogues of vinyl flooring
You're swearing in received pronunciation to impress a cute librairian
And exchanging hooded glances with the townies and the precinct barbarians

I'm bereft, I don't have a single secret left
You traded them for stakes in crystal meth
So you're a millionaire
If truth be told, I only came for something for my cold
I blame the lure of the laissez-faire
That you're the millionaire of your own hair

There is an ancient journalist and he stoppeth one in three
And he's asking me if I equate dressing badly with insincerity
He's writing a book called "How To Tell Taxi Drivers They're Wrong."
And he doesn't trust people, but he knows his all-time favouite song
Now the millionaire is busy pulling single dads on underground trains
And he's blanking the old hack with characteristic haughty disdain
Today he's fitting in a louche professor of Drama and Mime
He says "I'd love to be lonely but I can't seem to find the time"

I'm bereft, I don't have a single secret left
You traded them for stakes in crystal meth
So you're a millionaire
If truth be told, I only came for something for my cold
You're telling the newspaper questionnaires
That you're the millionaire
Yes, you're the millionaire of your own hair