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Popular Songs, Poetry, and Performance: Observations on an On-going Debate

Abstract This article revisits critical explorations of the question whether popular songs should be regarded as poetry or not and will explore the concepts of poetry that inform these discussions, with a special focus on the importance critics place on the aspect of performance in their attempts to either distinguish between songs and poetry or to (re-)align them. It will be shown that whether critics stress the differences or the similarities between poetry and popular songs does not only rest on their respective ideas of poetry, but also on their disciplinary agenda. The importance of the aspect of performance in popular songs, it is argued, can be illustrated by their ‘coverability,’ which will be briefly illustrated with the help of an analysis of a recent example of a cover version where the lyrics stay the same as in the original, whereas the overall effect is radically changed due to a transformed musical and vocal performance.