Perhaps the most convincing way to demonstrate that the best of rock lyrics are effective poetry is to show how skillfully certain techniques are used to develop themes which these techniques are organically suited to treat. The relatively more objective poems employ drama, irony, implication, and ambiguity to treat the theme of daily restriction, whereas the more subjective songs present their worlds solipsistically and surrealistically to develop the themes of non-conformity and independent thinking. Both types often rely on setting to reveal states of mind.

To illustrate these trends in popular music, I have chosen the hybrid genre of folk-rock as performed by Paul Simon because the lyrics found in this idiom often provide the best examples of those songs that dramatize objectively their theme, that of restriction and failure. Let us begin, then, with songs that view the world more from the outside than within a mind...