Poll? Hell yeah, I got a poll. About every other stanza this guy writes gives me chills they are so good. He can seeminlgy toss off more great lines whilst on the crapper than most do over entire careers.

I cannot think of a better lyricist, or in fact, a better poet of the last 40 years.

There are some good to great lyricists of course. Nick Drake, Beefheart, Dylan even. Not shabby. Gotta give an honorable mention here to Will Oldham as well.

But can this man be bested? I think not.

MES' words are so much an integral component of The Fall (does that even bear saying?) but the best thing is that they are couched in some of the finest music rock and roll has spewed forth. At best you get that once a generation, where the quality of the words meets the music and back.

ray davies [but i dont see the madness so much]


so if u mean mad...


captain beefheart

I'd say there are dozens of great lyricists. Depends on what you're looking for in particular words... rhythm, meaning, the repetition of sounds, word play, etc. MES is one of the great unique lyricists ("Mere Pseud Mag Ed" looks like a foreign tongue to most people, for example) and so in his particular way, he may be unmatched... but there are others who are just as good in different ways.

It's all bollocks, of course... but quite mesmerising. I think it's the voice & intonation rather than the lyrics: it could be his shopping list - oh hang on, it more-or-less was on "Buck"'s, wasn't it? :lol:

Nigel Blackwell.

Your Mother.

That wasn't a lyricist, just a friendly put-down.

B)

The bloke in Black Box recorder whose name I can't remember. Bob Dylan. Ray Davies. Joni Mitchell. Not better but good as well. For many people MES isn't great because at times he makes no sense. But as others have said it's impossible to separate the words from the music, though we like to try.

Cole Porter
Noel Coward

John McKeown

Lorenzo da Ponte

Surprising but dead good choices. Tom Lehrer too...satirist extraordinaire.

Frank Black is a great lyricist...Gerald Langley was good in the early 90's but then got the aeroplane blues....Dylan's written a couple of songs...but I think I think MES is the best of the era...

Have mentioned him elsewhere: howsabout Jack Brewer of Saccharine Trust?!

I wouldn't want argue who's better (b/c that's missing the point), but he certainly works a similar aesthetic: well-read schizo erupting with words and ideas, at times as if fighting the instruments backing him.

The Last Poets (for sheer ire)

Keith Reid/Procol Harum (for psychedelic meandering)

Peter Blegvad/Slapp Happy (for glib cabaret parodying)

Don Van Vliet (for delusional outbursts)

Newman/Lewis/Gilbert-Wire (for scientifically calculated emotional absence)

Becker/Fagen (for corrosive obscure insider indictments)

mid-'60s Dylan (for volcanic eruptions of bile)

MES (for all of the above)

My SST Chunks CD made it Canada this week! Is Jack Brewer the one singing "Christmas Cry" (he seems upset).

Of an equal standing;

Don Van Vliet, Will Oldham, Morrisey, Lou Barlow, Shaun Ryder (don't laugh, check out the early stuff- pure chaotic genius), Nick Drake I could just go through me record collection and be here all night but I think there are plenty that are up to smith's standard, oh yeh- Pete Waterman as well. :lol:

these are neat, but please do not forget all the lovely american mens and womens volk who have waxed honestly psychotic onto vanity pressed wax. There are many many of these inspired, so called outsider artists. If MES creates a savory Chef's Word Salad, others I cite here do wonders with wilted romaine.

To me they absolutely out-do our sacred cow Beefhearts and wanna be Baudelaires.

The undersung heros/ines of the mighty Song-Poem genre, for example

Give me Thomas J Guygax, Calgar Jaun Singlatary, Louise J Oliver, and Richard Doer (to name but a few) of this sublimely insular world!

You must now learn the difference between big wood and brush

...and Wesley Willis.

RIP

Kool Keith as Dr Octagon.
Mike Ladd.

Okay, there are some heavy hitters mentioned here. However, I would counter that the majority of them (Will Oldham, Jack Brewer, Don Van Beefheart, etc.) have not written nearly as much. Oldham's career is less than 15 years old while the Cap'n was working mainly from the mid-sixties to 1980 or thereabouts. None of them were as prolific. Or as long lasting. Even Becker/Fagen (who I don't think I'd put in the list for finest lyrics anyway) haven't got nearly the back catalog of songs.

Frank Black and Nick Drake fit in here as well. Good lyrics, but a drop in the bucket compared to MES' very consistent, very lengthy body of work.

Still more (Cole Porter, Noel Coward) are no longer with us and are also completely divorced from rock and roll, which really is what we are talking about. This is a chalk and cheese comparison.

Others yet (Dylan, Ray Davies, Joni Mitchell) I would argue are much less consistent and that their best work is way behind them.

I believe it was otherdave who suggested that a lot of the appeal of Mark's words has to do with his voice and delivery. I agree wholeheartedly, but I think this only reinforces my belief that there is nobody better.

Okay, I will give proper respect here. Though I think Wire has not stretched out as much or touched on as wide an array of subject matter, these guys are not shoddy. Just the way, in "Lowdown" where they have the line "...another cigarette...another day..."... so much comes across in that one little bit.

But Wire is also more of a collaborative effort than The Fall/MES. And they have taken extended hiatuses (hiati?) from time to time.

I am not saying someone has to convince me that I am wrong. I was just curious to see what other folks would have to say about this. But so far, none of the responses are convincing to me.

leonard cohen? what is the fashion business? " idont like your fashion business mister"

david mccomb-the triffids

morrissey's clever and witty

nick cave

leonard cohen - like smith, would be a great stand up comedian [in fact was - check the 1965 'ladies and gentlemen' poetry tour dvd]

ivor cutler

wavering with bob dylan, but he comes close.

beefheart perhaps.

maybe one or two more. but smith is up there with the best.

Another vote for David being one of the best around.

David McComb is not around anymore, is he? He was good but not really in the Champions leguage IMO...

He's been dead quite some time now, alas.

Has Wes Willis gone too? Strewth!

I like MES, RDD, David Thomas, Dave Graney, Peter Milton Walsh, Rob Forster, Iggy Pop, Tom T Hall - whoever. I like Smith best 'cos he's never tried to rhyme.

noones mentioned ian curtis :o

Why? is he dead too?

You'll never see me try to raise Cain
You'll never see me wear a suit of, err, green

MES is at his generally best when he mostly ignores the conventions & rigours of traditional song-writing, I reckon, which means that Beefheart, Morrissey & Dylan are probably the most relevant comparisons in this thread.

Bingo Master's Breakout rhymes. So does Fiery Jack, Shoulder Pads and many more. Rhyme is not per se good or bad...it's just a technique which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

I think MES is in a real class of his own. He's been consistantly brilliant for so long...

Others I like, but aren't in the same league, include Howard Devoto, especially the early Buzzcocks stuff, Scott Walker ("recent" stuff only- "Climate of Hunter" being especially good), David Grubbs pens a neat, if obtuse, couplet now and again.

not better but equal: shaun ryder on YES,PLEASE
kurt cobain on IN UTERO

Tom Smith of TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN LA
Capt. Beefheart
James Chance (only contortions material)
CAROLINER RAINBOW
Fred Lane


but of course MES is my favorite.

This is a top list.. to which I'd add Syd Barrett and 60s Zappa..

But MES beats them all hands down. I don't buy the "some of it means nothing" angle either.. I've yet to find an MES lyric that seems purely random, the more I listen and understand, the more charged with meaning and narrative his lyrics become.

Obviously some of it is pretty surreal, but never meaningless..

Paul Weller?



:P
(only jesting)

What about Shane Macgowan... you puffs. Greatest " convential" lyricist.
MES best "poet". end of thread.

...apart from my admiration for your correct spelling of "puffs", as opposed to "poofs" or "poufs" (powfs?)...
I suspect a proper Northerner's hand.

Jacques Brel has never really been bettered if you can understand French. Some of the translations have been a bit dodgy though (Seasons In The Sun??!)

Dylan is Smith's only better, and only then because he writes songs about love, which by some measures makes Dylan worse, so it's an uneasy trump. :rollover:

"I sat on the floor and watched TV
Thanking Christ for the BBC
A stupid f*ckin place to be
Down on Rain Street"

Shane McGowan

Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Billy Bragg & David Gedge I believe are worthy of mention...