5 Great Songwriters Who Defined A Generation

Five songwriters who are more than just musicians. Who would you pick?

Song writing is an art form that is often underrated, and very hard to master. Even the greatest of bands struggle to write with profundity or reason, using their musical alchemy as the predominant tool so the words need not be of any particular significance. As long as the records are selling, some musicians view lyrics as a lesser component if they are not inclined to the literary side of things. However, for others, the structure of the words is just as important and vital as the composition, as there are some souls out there who want to be heard completely, to tell stories, and to convey messages. And so, here is a list of five artists who have displayed a divine knack for wordplay in the decades that have passed, proving that music can feed the spirit in a number of ways.

1. Nick Cave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4VWKbZkIcM Born in Victoria, Australia in 1957, Nick Cave is a journeyman in the art of song writing, operating officially since 1973 with his first group, The Birthday Party. The son of an English teacher and a librarian, it is no surprise that Cave€™s involvement with the literary world was more intense than the average person, and his voracious appetite for literature in his younger days would mould him into a fine artist in the ensuing years. Though his exploits as a novelist and a screenwriter have come under some criticism, there is little contention about Cave€™s standing in the music industry, where he has garnered a huge amount of respect from his peers. His early years in The Birthday Party were in great contrast to the style Cave has become renowned for, as the band made their name in London by producing volatile, skittish music with macabre lyrics, which sectioned them off from an audience outside the punk and post-punk circle. In 1983, The Birthday Party collapsed and Cave moved onto a new, more thoughtful project, assembling Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which would prove to be his finest career decision yet. The Bad Seeds is where the young writer found his niche, exploring his deeply ingrained fascinations with love, death, fiction, and religion, and soon enough people were taking notice of the lanky, leering Australian with the greasy mullet and piercing gaze. Now aged 55, Cave is still going strong with Grinderman, a beautifully ugly bunch of musicians who go about their business with just as much pizzazz and gusto as The Bad Seeds, and, unlike other songwriters, mid-life has not withered him nor has it poured water on his eagerness to keep producing new material for his fans. Signature track: The Ship Song (1990) Tune into...: And No More Shall We Part (2001)
 
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A university graduate with a keen enthusiasm for culture, sport, and outrageous news. My heroes are Charles Bukowski, Jimi Hendrix, Robert De Niro, and the magnificent Zinedine Zidane.