Quote:
Originally Posted by william z
Krazykiwi - That may be the tradition in Sweden, but I don't think it is the tradition in the USA or most of the world.
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That was my actual point, William.
The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded by a Swedish committee. Not an American one. Not even an international one. They are fulfilling their task as provided by the (Swedish) benefactor of the awards, and as they understand it.
It occurs to me there are plenty of American based literary awards, and sometimes the winners of those are quite mystifying to us foreigners. I don't think I'd go around saying the winners of those are not worthy though.
That said, I think the tradition of blending song and poetry is much stronger in much of the world than you might think. Such a tradition is fairly strong across at least much of Europe and Asia (Japanese Noh, Chinese Opera, for instance, are widely considered dramatic poetry, although they are sung.) The US is, relative to the rest of the world, only a small piece after all, and while globalisation might make it seem like US culture is taking over the world, it isn't that simple.
And sure, a lot of lyrics, particularly of pop music, are not really written in the form of poetry and you would have a hard time claiming them any literary merit. They depend on rhythm and intonation and other things that are only available when they are actually sung. But it's a spectrum, people like Dylan and Vreeswijk are a million miles away from the current top 10.
In the end, to me your argument so seems to be "I don't like it and that's not how we do it here, therefore, it is bad."