Lyrics

Ultimate Classic Rock counts down the best Beatles lyrics.

Ray Davies and the Kinks were so wildly creative in their time, they’re considered godfathers of punk, metal, Britpop, indie rock and more, thanks to the band's music. But the band's frontman is also a great storyteller. No less a songsmith than Pete Townshend has credited his own growth as a writer to Davies' finely tuned character portraits. When...

Simon & Garfunkel rose to prominence in the mid-'60s as part of the folk-rock movement, but by the time the duo ended their run in 1970, they had created a body of work that touched on pop, rock, country, gospel and world music. Their clean productions and pristine vocal harmonies made their records among the best-sounding albums of that era. Bu...

Bob Dylan has written plenty of wise life advice in his decades-long career as a songwriter.

‘Sultans of Swing’ was both the first single from Dire Straits’ debut album and a revealing first-person account of the average working band’s hardscrabble, often thankless existence playing British pubs during the '70s. It’s only fitting, therefore, that Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler was inspired to write the tune in a pub, pint in hand, whilst watching just one such band calling themselves –

Arguably, no heavy metal singer wielded greater influence over the length and breadth of heavy metal’s long history than the sorely missed Ronnie James Dio. Now, now, don't get worked up! Simple math tells us this is so, by reason of Dio's relatively brief but nevertheless momentous associations with heavy metal cornerstones such as Rainbow and Black Sabbath, on top of a long and successful tenure

It's tough separating Talking Heads' lyrics from their music. After all, they were famous for their innovative use of rhythm, and brought African and other musical ideas from around the world long before Paul Simon and other pop stars got there...

Billy Joel's extensive catalog is filled with all kinds of songs: character studies, narrative-driven portraits, silly love song, serious love songs, political statements and songs about what it was like to grow up on Long Island in the late-'50s and early-'60s...

In Feb. 1963, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were sitting in the back of a tour bus, seeing if they could rise to the occasion. With ‘Please Please Me’ riding high on the British charts, producer George Martin had issued the Beatles’ budding songwriters a challenge: bring a new composition of equal quality to their next studio session.

By 1968, Simon & Garfunkel had produced a string of folk-rock hits that included ‘The Sound of Silence,’ 'I Am a Rock' and ‘Mrs. Robinson.' But their chart success brought the duo criticism from folk music purists.