Rock'n'roll as a direct art! Focusing Echobelly's Great Things lyrics and Laura Riding's poem Dimensions 


Author's name (parents' draft). Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor)
Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really."
Author's name (my first draft). 0161__Rajivan
Abstract. What is the value of rock'n'roll music? Some will say, "None!" This paper draws attention to how rock'n'roll allows for the direct formulation of thoughts and emotions which a poet may well feel are too plain for their art - the high art of poetry - when directly expressed. I do so comparing Echobelly's song Great Things with Laura Riding's poem "Dimensions"
Draft version: version 3 (songwriting credits 12 July; v2 12th July 2026 major redraft; version 1 12th September 2025)
PDF at: https://www.academia.edu/143908102/Rocknroll_as_a_direct_art_Focusing_Echobellys_Great_Things_lyrics_and_Laura_Ridings_poem_Dimensions

"Upon your ways I shall drape
Metaphors and similes and every other literary shape"


Classical music is esteemed, but it is not the only kind of music. There is also rock'n'roll and more. What is the value of rock'n'roll? Perhaps the person who listens to only classical music will say, "There is no value." Here I propose that there is probably a realism value.


        I have been listening to the song Great Things by the rock'n'roll band Echobelly and watching videos of the band performing. In one video, the lead singer presents a type of schoolgirl, talented and ambitious. The singer or character she is playing wants to experience life and love. She tells us, "Oh what do I know / There's got to be so much I don't know." And the song Great Things includes these recurring words:
"I want to do great things
I don't want to compromise
I want to know what life is
I want to know everything
I want to do great things
I don't wanna compromise
I want to know what love is..."
A worry about treating this as a poem is that while the poet might express these sentiments, on behalf of themselves or another, we expect the poet to express them in a "fancier" way: a flashy metaphor or simile or some hyperbole, for example:
"I want to do great things
I want to join great kings
I fear not exile
(Well, if it only lasts for a short while)"
"Yes, what do we pay poets for except some fancy talk!" you say? How should we react to the plain and direct expression of these sentiments in the Echobelly song? A failure of the lyricist? The girl described does not go in for these poetic adornments and so there is realism value in the Echobelly lyrics? The medium of rock'n'roll usually inhibits rich imagery, which would distract from the music? Or some other explanation? No idea, but I am attracted to the realism value.


It may well be that a poet proper, who starts off with the emotion being expressed within herself - or detects it in another and writes as if them - feels embarrassed by such plain words as the Echobelly lyrics. "The common sentiment combined with the plain words is not good enough for poetry, for the high art of poetry!" they feel. But to change the words would distort the representation of the thinking.


Perhaps such distortion is behind Laura Riding's wonderfully worded early poem Dimensions. Here are the first 3 stanzas:
"Measure me for a burial
That my low stone may neatly say
In a precise, Euclidean way
How I am three-dimensional.

Yet can life be so thin and small?
Measure me in time. But time is strange
And still and knows no rule or change
But death and death is nothing at all.

Measure me by beauty.
But beauty is death's earliest name
For life, and life's first dying, a flame
That glimmers, an amaranth that will fade
And fade again in death's dim shade."

The first stanza says, "Measure me for a burial" and the gravestone will merely say that she is 3 dimensional, but this does not seem enough. How about evaluating her in terms of beauty, upon her death? She soon rejects that! Perhaps Riding started out with thoughts or emotions or desires which are perfectly captured by the Echobelly lyrics: "I want to do great things; I don't want to compromise" and thought this is no good for poetry! Either the thought must change or must be expressed more fancily! Rock'n'roll, as a less prestigious art form, allows for direct expression of these, instead of distorted expression.

References
Riding, Laura. 1923. Dimensions. The Fugitive 2 (8). Available at:
https://monadnock.net/riding/dimensions.html
Scamparoo. 2015. Echobelly - Great Things. Youtube. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLH8wC7jMOY&list=RDfLH8wC7jMOY&start_radio=1
(According to Wikipedia, this song was written by Sonya Madan and Glenn Johansson. It was produced by Kolderie and released on 21 August 1995.)


Note
The character presented in the Echobelly song, seems similar to the character of Betty Boo.
80's 90's Music Video's Remastered@Videos80s. 2024. Betty Boo - Doin' The Do 1990 (Official Music Video) Remastered. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfdaETpbGjc
(According to Wikipedia, this song was written by Alison Clarkson, Robert Seidenberg, Kenny Young. It was produced by Betty Boo - Clarkson? - and King John. Warner Brothers released it on 7 May 1990.)