Patti Smith: Collected Lyrics

Patti Smith has been writing songs since the early 1970s — poetry set to rock music, or rock music elevated to poetry, depending on your perspective — and the complete lyrics gathered in this volume represent one of the most sustained and most seriously literary bodies of songwriting in the history of popular music. From ‘Gloria’ and ‘Horses’ through ‘Because the Night’ (written with Bruce Springsteen), ‘Easter’, and the work of her later decades, Smith’s lyrics move between prophetic declaration and intimate confession, between political rage and private elegy, with a freedom of movement that almost no other songwriter has achieved.

For fans of Patti Smith — and for anyone who wants to understand how one writer transformed rock music by insisting that it could carry the full weight of poetry. Published by Bloomsbury.