Talk:List of songs based on poems

Untitled
I've been updating this as I expand my own collection of songs based on poems, so the next person trying to do this doesn't have to dig quite as much. It became clear pretty quickly that it needed to be subdivided or it was going to be an unreadable mass of text. My organizational system right now is something like this: If there is more than one artist that has adapted songs by a particular author, the author gets their own heading. Under each heading, song titles performed by more than one artist get priority, then particular artists who've adapted more than one song. If there's ever a question of order, it's alphabetical by author. If anyone comes up with something better, have at. --Psychoadept (talk) 09:33, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Questions to consider:


 * What is considered poetry, as opposed to prose or lyrics?
 * Do Shakespeare's plays count?
 * Would the Psalms count?
 * What about cases where a poem was written and later set to music by the same person? (Many of Robert Burns' works, Suzanne by Leonard Cohen, Unpretty by TLC, etc)


 * Where is line between reading and singing? (Songs like Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis might fall into a gray area.)
 * Some musical genres have spoken lyrics. How do we classify pieces like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised?

--141.211.173.97 (talk) 23:22, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Is 'Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis' definitely based on a Bukowski poem? Cannot find ANY source! It's not in Roominghouse Madrigals. --SlopingFlange (talk) 12:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't say definitively, but I did find it quoted in full in the reviews of the Amazon listing for Notes of a Dirty Old Man (http://www.amazon.com/review/R1FL1ZJUE7HOEB/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm). Psychoadept (talk) 09:55, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Miscellaneous section formatting
The formatting in the miscellaneous section is confusing and inconsistent. Sometimes the poem name and author are listed, and it's not clear who actually did the music. Also, the poem title is sometimes in quotes, sometimes not. I'd recommend using the following ordering: poet, "poem title", musician.Davearthurs (talk) 23:59, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Indescriminate
This is a rather indiscriminate list. Reasonably, it can't list every single song based on a poem – there are thousands and thousands and thousands of those around the world. Would a reasonable limit be that both the poet/writer and the composer/musician are notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article? To avoid the current situation where I could be tempted to add myself if I write a mediocre song based on a William Blake poem. /Julle (talk) 11:36, 8 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Cleaned up a bit. /Julle (talk) 23:25, 11 July 2022 (UTC)