Mumford and Sons and Company: My Favorite Lyricists

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Okay. I am an extremely words-oriented person. And I also love music. So songs with lyrics are potentially the greatest things in the world as far as I'm concerned. I'm always terribly happy to stumble accross an artist who combines good music with strong, unique lyrics. Here are a few of my favorite wordsmiths. 

1. Adam Young

link to dorky picture

I love his lyrics, particularly in the albums All Things Bright And Beautiful, Maybe I'm Dreaming, and Ocean Eyes (which is just about my favorite album in the world). His lush lyrics evoke mental images saturated with color. Apart from the frequent occurence of the word blue, he employs a wide vocabulary, which is always refreshing. Charmingly enough, he positively puns; the endless wordplay and the playful use of colloquialisms from many different decades give his lyrics a tone that is quaint and sly by turns. Plus, bonus: the content of his songs is remarkably clean in this degenerate day and age. I am sorry to say that he is the only secular lyricist that I can recommend across the board; just goes to show how awesome he is.

Favorite lyric: Oh, gosh, I can't pick favorites. But I do like this one from "Technicolor Phase":

I am the black in the books, the letters on the pages that you memorize

And I am the orange in the overcast, a color that you visualize

2. Mumford and Sons 

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Fun fact: Did you know Marcus Mumford's parents are the national leaders of the Vineyard church in the UK and Ireland? Explains a lot, doesn't it? I love the sparse, simple, yet deep and inscrutable lyrics that Mumford writes. There's a sort of raw quality to his songs. He mixes good, strong verbs with ... well, earthy metaphors, but earthy as in references to nature, not earthy in the sense of bawdy and vulgar. His vocabulary leans on the archaic side; I rather fancy this is the result of his exposure to the Bible and other old sources. He quotes Shakespeare in his lyrics, you know. For heaven's sake, his first album is entitled Sigh No More, which is in itSELF a quote from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Pretty awesome, right? (I like Shakespeare.) I can recommend the tracks "Sigh No More" (the song, not the whole album unfortunately), "Awake My Soul" (ahhhh love that song, so gud), "Roll Away Your Stone," "Dust Bowl Dance," annnnnd I suppose "The Cave," although that song doesn't really do for me what the other songs on the album do. -- Never listened to Babel, by the way. I didn't particularly like the singles from it I heard played on the radio, and didn't bother to look into it further. I should, one of these days, though ... it may very well be good ...

Favorite Lyric: Usually this verse from "Awake My Soul":

Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes, I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep totally free

3. Ben Gibbard

... okay, I could seriously not find a good picture of him. It's all his fault. He just stares blankly at the camera.

Ben Gibbard is a master poet, with a vast vocabulary and flexible sense of meter. I always read his lyrics before I listen to the songs, and when I read them, the meter is almost perceptible: I can rarely tell which words are supposed to rhyme. Then I listen to the song, and rhymes appear out of nowhere. Magical, really. I can scarcely pin down what it is about his lyrics that entrances me so much. I guess it's the very concrete nouns and precise language communicating abstract ideas of love and sorrow. For instance, take this verse from his song "Title and Registration":

The glove compartment is innacurately named
And everybody knows it
So I'm proposing a swift orderly change
Cause behind it's door
There's nothing to keep my fingers warm
And all I find
Are souvenirs from better times

Like that. I don't know, I just love it. I can recommend the tracks "Soul Meets Body," "Title and Registration," "Different Names for the Same Thing," and, especially this one, "Transatlantacism" (the song, not the album).

Favorite Lyric: Well, of course the lyric "Brown Eyes, I'll hold you near / Cause you're the only song I want to hear" -- which I just find so sweet, nobody says nice things about brown eyes, everybody's going on about the blue ones and the green ones! -- but aside from that one, I luuuuuuv the whole of the song Transatlantacism. Here's just the first verse.

The Atlantic was born today, and I'll tell you how

The clouds above opened up and let it out

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere when the water filled every hole

And thousands upon thousands made an ocean making islands where no islands should go

Oh, no

Ah. You'll just have to listen to it to find out what happens next.

4. Robert Robinson

Evidently, he wrote "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" at age 22. If that's not awesome, I don't know what is.

Oh to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, 

Bind my wandering heart to Thee:

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for thy courts above

5. Whoever wrote "Be Thou My Vision"

I don't know who it was for sure, and neither does Wikipedia, but whoever he or she was, I'm a fan.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise

Thou mine inheritance, now and always;

Thou and thou only, first in my heart,

High King of heaven, my treasure thou art.

So, yes, there you have it, some of my favorite lyrics and lyricists. What are some of yours? Do tell! I'm ripe for some new songs :).