The Best Canadian Lyricists

It has been said, and it is true, that the best Canadian lyricists are the best lyricists in the language. It seems to be a peculiarly Canadian art form. The one great name that we anomalously miss up north is Nobel laureate Bob Dylan. But perhaps his talent springs from a similar source. He grew up on Minnesota’s Iron Range. The wind, it sure blows cold way up there. Those long cold winters may foster the meditative state needed for poetry.

Leonard Cohen

The best new poet to emerge in English since Dylan Thomas and his body of work is more important. He is and will be remembered as Canada’s national poet. He sometimes gets a word wrong, but everything is polished like diamonds. In this, he differs from Dylan. A large proportion of what Dylan does is drek, although when he is good he seems to open doors on entire spiritual worlds. Cohen is consistent quality. That being so, it is hard to choose a sample. Everything is magnificent. One of his greatest talents is simplicity. He can say more in fewer words than anyone this side of Li Bai.

The sea so deep and blind
The sun, the wild regret
The club, the wheel, the mind,
O love, aren't you tired yet?

Joni Mitchell

She is, along with Cohen, one of the very few lyricists anywhere ever whose lyrics can stand alone as great poetry without the music. Leonard Cohen demonstrates by reciting “Jungle Line” as a poem in the clip shown. It is actually better without the music, which is a bit grating and conceals some of the words. Not that she isn’t great at the music as well—and at visual art. Graham Nash remarked that living with her was like living with Beethoven. She is a force of nature. I imagine she finds it difficult living in the world, because it really is all so beneath her.

Stan Rogers

His contribution was cut sadly short by a plane crash. But he was great at simple folk lyrics.

But I told that kid a hundred times "Don't take the Lakes for granted.
They go from calm to a hundred knots so fast they seem enchanted. "
And tonight some red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall
And her lover’s gone into a white squall.

Ian Tyson

Everybody knows “Four Strong Winds.” But he has written gems almost past counting, almost always worth many listenings: “Four Rode By.” Magnificent understatement in “Irving Berlin is a Hundred Years Old Today.” “Summer Wages.” Like Rogers, he seems to capture real life.

In all the beer parlors
All down along Main Street
The dreams of the season
Are spilled down on the floor
All the big stands of timber
Wait there just for falling
The hookers standing watchfully
Waiting by the door…

Gordon Lightfoot

Lightfoot sometimes came up with lyrics that were painfully bad. It is hard to forgive

“John loves Mary; does anyone love me?”

But when he was paying attention, he was the best.

If I could read your mind love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind the drugstore sells
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just to hard to take.

Neil Young

Young gives the impression of stream of consciousness writing, with a lot of heart laid bare. No craftsmanship, but it works. Like a wolf in the night howling at the moon.

There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there.

Robbie Robertson

Lyricist for The Band. Pretty good at narrative and atmosphere. He would be appreciated more in Canada if the atmosphere he evokes were not so classically American rather than Canadian.

I picked up my bags, I went looking for a place to hide
When I saw old Carmen and the Devil, walking side by side
I said, "Hey, Carmen, c'mon, let's go downtown"
She said, "I gotta go, but my friend can stick around"

“Somewhere Down This Crazy River” is pure beat poetry:

I followed the sound of a jukebox coming from up the levee
All of a sudden, I could hear somebody whistling from right behind me
I turned around, and she said
"Why do you always end up down at Nick's Cafe?"
I said, "Uh, I don't know, the wind just kinda pushed me this way"
She said, "Hang the rich"

Buffy Ste. Marie
She can do anything. What comes across to me most strongly is her amazing sense of taste, of “just right.” Rarely any kind of misstep. Her voice is like that too.

Guess who I saw in Paris
Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Standing with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Standing in the street with his thumbs hooked in his belt
Looking all of seventeen

Guess who invited him up to her room
Guess who made him some tea
Guess who got spaced with him, played his guitar
Guess who fell asleep on his arm.

Stompin’ Tom Connors

His muse is the comic muse, which generally does not get the respect that more solemn muses get. But comedy too knows truth. And it is an essentially Canadian genre, stretching from Thomas Chandler Haliburton through Leacock and Robert W. Service to Michael Myers, Lorne Michaels, and the lot. Lots of funny, clever rhymes.

Not PC, but one of his earliest songs is still one of his most memorable:

She came a long, long way from Frobisher Bay
People, don’cha know now what I mean
She had the boys all cryin' on the Distant Early Warning Line
Old Muk-Tuk Annie could really make the scene.

And one of the most famous rhymes in Canadian history:

The girls are out to Bingo and the boys are gettin' stinko,
And we think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night.

Gord Downie

Meh. So I’m told. I’ve mostly missed the Tragically Hip phenomenon, being out of the country for most of it. Tragically Hip is unknown outside of Canada. I have not seen lyrics of his that I like that much, but I am a tyro here.

There are other great Canadian lyricists: too many, actually, to mention. You have to love “Superman’s Song,” for example, or some of the lyrics to Rita McNeil’s “Working Man.

And there are other great Canadian songwriters. Randy Bachmann, for example, with and without Burton Cummings, or Bryan Adams. But these guys are more in the Tin Pan Alley mold: they can crank out great pop songs with great hooks, well-composed confections. But not poetry, as lyrics, and more craft than art. You do not feel them in your gut. And some of Cummings’ lyrics are unforgivably awful: “Talisman, grace my hand.” “American Woman.”

It is also worth noting that Canadian lyrical excellence extends also to the French. Robert Charlebois and Gilles Villeneuve belong in the same rank as our English examples.