“The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be,” wrote the late poet John Ashbery (one of many great wordsmiths we lost this decade). The same could be said about song lyrics—after all, is a song really so different from a poem? Albeit with some controversy, Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
Lyrics can feel so personal, and yet the greatest of them are open to endless interpretations, little mirrors in which everyone can find themselves. Whether happy or sad or both at the same time, these lines cannot belong to any one of us, because they belong to all of us.
Here are my picks for ten song lyrics that defined the 2010’s decade in rock music:
-- Arcade Fire, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
-- Cage the Elephant, “Shake Me Down”
-- David Bowie, “Lazarus”
-- Courtney Barnett, “Pedestrian At Best”
-- St Vincent, “Digital Witness”
-- Wilco, “If I Ever Was a Child”
-- Mitski, “Your Best American Girl”
-- Big Thief, “Paul”
-- David Byrne, “Everybody's Coming to My House”
-- Vampire Weekend, “Harmony Hall”
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