Artistic Merits

Artistic Merits: ‘“Heroes”’ vs “True Love Conquers All” When Bob Dylan found success as a singer and songwriter in the early 1960s, a heated debate was started as to whether his song lyrics could be considered poetry. This controversy has lasted even to this day, with Dylan’s recent reception of the Nobel Prize in Literature creating a new interest in the issue. Despite these debates, Bob Dylan’s deep and profound lyrics have influenced many later artists including Neil Young, The Velvet Underground, and Tupac Shakur. Perhaps the most famous of all musicians influenced by Bob Dylan is the late David Bowie, an English rock star who took Dylan’s poetic influences and musical storytelling to another level that fans and critics could not get enough
The piece is written completely free verse and literal, with only two metaphors being used in the first and third paragraphs, in a stark contrast to ‘“Heroes”’. This combined with the poor balance of syllables in each line makes “True Love Conquers All” feel more like a paragraph than an artistic poem. It should also be noted that the piece uses almost no SOAPSTone elements. There is no clear speaker, no clear audience, no given or implied purpose, and no occasion can be found in the writing. All of this combined makes “True Love Conquers All” feel not only inartistic, but uninspired and generic, and makes the reader question the author’s
Brian Wheeler, a journalist for the BBC has written an article on the controversy over song lyrics and art, in which he mentions a quote by English poet Simon Artmitage, who states that "songs are not poems, I should say. In fact, songs are often bad poems. Take the music away and what you're left with is often an awkward piece of creative writing full of lumpy syllables, cheesy rhymes,