My intuitive answer is yes. Not all musical lyrics are poetry, but some musicians are most definitely poets. Dylan even won the Nobel Prize for literature, no one could possibly argue the unique sensibility and authenticity in the lyrics of Cohen, Lennon, Morrison, Reed, and many others.
Poems exist in a silent space. The problem I have with reading just the lyrics is how not to hear the musical elements in my head, how to separate both integral parts of the song, deconstruct it to be able to analyze the lyrics without the accompanying music.
To answer my question, I was having a dilemma choosing between Joad and Tunnel but will say Tunnel because of the lyrical depth. The intensely personal songs, dealing with self-doubt, failure, and disappointment have the right to be classified as poetry. The roller coaster ride is arguably the best metaphor in his repertoire.
The first time the thought of lyrics being poetry as well entered my mind when I heard "Eleanor Rigby" and "A day in the life" by the Beatles. (That's how old I am). Then there was Dylan, of course, Paul Simon, Cohen...
And the force of words of "Born to Run" literally took my breath away. I am often poring over Bruce lyrics, their beauty and depth.
Cracking idea for a topic.
Lyrics and music are just too married together for the most part in so much music, in some ways it compromises the poetry of it all. As a basic example, melodies and chord progressions may require a certain 'sound' from the vocalised part so it works together, so the song writer is constrained word wise that way and so the writer may use language they otherwise might not so that the full music and word delivery works.
I mean, Thunder Road reads ok as poetry, but it only gets about 3/4 of the way to what it is when just read on a page. Thunder Road the poem is like a 4:3 presentation of a movie on a SD television, Thunder Road the song is the HD wide-screen version of the thing.
For me, there are two Bruce albums that I can sit and read as poetry, and its no coincidence that the music is not as big a factor on both albums. The first is Greetings... very wordy, obviously, but JF makes a great point about the internal rhythm of the word play. The songs for the most are singer-songwriter type pieces dressed up as band pieces, certainly not written intended for the band, and so the lyrics almost stand separate to the music in some fashion.
The other one is Joad. That lyric booklet can easily be read just on it's own, but again not surprising as the music for so much of it is so minimalist. Especially the more narrative pieces on there (Galveston Bay, Sinaloa Cowboys, Balboa Park etc)... incredible achievements poetically, actually, IMO.
He's the greatest songwriter in all of history. There is poetry in all of it. Everything is poetic....
Lost in the Flood
The Angel
Spirit in the Night
Incident
NYC
All of Born to Run....In fact, I played it for someone who had never heard it before, they were in tears by the end..
All of it.
Madman
Drummers
Bummers and...
Indians in the summer
With a teenage diplomat.
In the
Dumps
With the
Mumps
as the adolescent pumps
His way
into
His hat.
I typed out some stuff about the accepted differences and similarities between poetry and song lyrics and Aristotle's division of poetry into three categories, but I decided not to be a boring windbag and deleted it. As a writer of poems and lyrics, I completely ignore the established "rules" of poetry and I think song lyrics are usually either poetry or chants.
If I imagine a Springsteen album as a book of verse, I'd want to read Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. or The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. There's an inherent beat in young Bruce's rhymes that imply you could remove the music and what remains would amount to gritty street beat poetry.
I will give some thought to which album best fits later - that being the question asked by Louisa.
At a funeral recently when I heard one of the two usual funeral poems I got to thinking whether ' I'll See You in my Dreams ' would work being spoken as opposed to sung. I tried it a few times (in the privacy of my own home) and it sounded perfect.
It will be my choice of reading at my, or my loved ones, funerals.
Very hard to say what song lyrics wouldn't also be classed as poetry, there's so much crossover. If I had to choose a Bruce album for poetic reasons, it'd be probably either The Wild, The Innocent or Born To Run.