You know that feeling when a song finishes and you just kind of sit there in the silence? It's like the air in the room changed. That isn't usually because of a catchy beat or a fancy synth. It's the writing. Honestly, most music is just "vibes," but the best written songs ever do something else—they tell a truth you didn't know you were allowed to say out loud.
Songwriting is a weird, messy craft. It's not just about rhyming "heart" with "apart" for the millionth time. It’s about how Bob Dylan can turn a ten-page "piece of vomit" (his words, not mine) into a rock anthem, or how Leonard Cohen can spend years obsessing over a single verse until he’s literally banging his head on the floor.
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The Obsessive Magic of Hallelujah
If we're talking about pure, unadulterated craftsmanship, we have to start with Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah." People think of it as this holy, peaceful hymn because of the Shrek soundtrack or the Jeff Buckley cover, but the history is way more chaotic.
Cohen didn't just sit down and write a masterpiece. He wrote around 150 draft verses. He spent five years on it. There’s a famous story about him sitting in his underwear at the Royalton Hotel in New York, just filling notebooks and feeling completely defeated by the song.
What makes it one of the best written songs ever is that it isn’t just about religion. It's about "holiness and horniness," as critic Larry Sloman once put it. It balances the biblical imagery of David and Bathsheba with the "broken" hallelujah of a relationship falling apart. It's cynical and hopeful at the exact same time. That’s a hard line to walk without sounding cheesy.
Bob Dylan and the Six-Minute Revolution
Before 1965, pop songs were supposed to be three minutes long and about holding hands. Then Bob Dylan released "Like a Rolling Stone."
It’s over six minutes of snarling, poetic resentment. Dylan had just come back from a grueling UK tour and was ready to quit the business entirely. He wrote this massive, twenty-page sprawl of prose that wasn't even meant to be a song.
Why the Lyrics Matter
- The Perspective: It's a "revenge" song, but it's smarter than that. It asks "How does it feel?" to someone who had everything and lost it.
- The Structure: Dylan uses internal rhymes and "drilling" melodies that force you to listen to every word.
- The Breakthrough: It turned Dylan from a folk singer into a rock star and proved that radio audiences actually had an appetite for complex, literary lyrics.
The Vulnerability of Joni Mitchell
You can't have a conversation about the best written songs ever without mentioning Blue. Joni Mitchell basically invented the modern "confessional" style. On "A Case of You," she writes about a relationship with a level of detail that feels almost invasive.
"I am as constant as a northern star," the guy tells her.
"Constantly in the darkness / Where's that at? / If you want me I'll be in the bar," she hits back.
That's real dialogue. It's not "poetic" in the traditional sense; it's sharp and conversational. Joni once said she felt like she had "no secrets from the world" during this era. She was pulling the weeds in her soul. It’s that willingness to be "ugly" or "pathetic" in a song that makes her writing stand the test of time.
A Day in the Life: The Lennon-McCartney Peak
Sometimes the best writing comes from two different brains clashing. "A Day in the Life" is the ultimate example. John Lennon wrote the "I read the news today, oh boy" sections—dreamy, detached, and inspired by grim newspaper stories about car crashes and holes in the road.
Then you have Paul McCartney’s middle section: "Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head."
It’s mundane. It’s ordinary. But when you sandwich that "normal" life between Lennon’s psychedelic, existential dread, it becomes something massive. It’s a song about the gap between the world inside your head and the world you actually walk through every morning. They even left a 24-bar gap in the middle because they didn't know how to bridge the two parts yet. The result was that terrifying orchestral climb that still sounds like the world ending.
Modern Greats: Kendrick Lamar
Songwriting didn't die in the 70s. If you look at "How Much a Dollar Cost" by Kendrick Lamar, you’re seeing the same level of narrative depth you’d find in a short story by Flannery O'Connor.
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The song tells a specific story: Kendrick is at a gas station in South Africa, and a homeless man asks him for ten rand (about a dollar). Kendrick, feeling his own success and "pride," refuses. He judges the man. He thinks the guy is a crackhead.
The twist at the end—where the man reveals he’s actually God testing Kendrick’s soul—isn't just a gimmick. It’s a deep dive into the price of greed and the loss of empathy that comes with wealth. It’s arguably one of the best written songs ever because it uses the medium of hip-hop to tackle theological and political questions with zero fluff.
What Most People Get Wrong About Great Songs
A lot of people think a "well-written" song has to be complicated. It doesn't.
Paul Simon wrote "The Sound of Silence" when he was only 21. He used to sit in his parents' bathroom with the lights off and the water running because the tiles gave him a cool echo. "Hello darkness, my old friend" wasn't some grand philosophical statement at first—it was literally him talking to the dark bathroom.
But the lyrics resonated because they captured a universal feeling of alienation. People weren't communicating. They were "talking without speaking." You don't need a PhD to understand why that hurts.
How to Appreciate Songwriting on a Deeper Level
If you want to move past just "liking" a song and start understanding why it’s great, try these steps:
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- Read the lyrics without the music. If the words look like a bad poem, the song is probably relying on the production. If the words still make you feel something on the page, that’s the gold.
- Look for the "Turn." Most of the best written songs ever have a moment where the perspective shifts. In "A Case of You," it's the shift from the bar to the "holy wine."
- Check the drafts. If you can find the history of a song (like Dylan’s "vomit" draft), look at what the artist cut. What they leave out is often as important as what they keep in.
- Listen for the mundane. Great writers like McCartney or Joni Mitchell use tiny, everyday details—a bus pass, a glass of wine, a newspaper—to ground huge emotions.
The best written songs ever aren't just background noise. They're documents of what it feels like to be human, written by people who were brave enough to stay in the room until the words finally made sense.