A BIG OLD BABY-BOOMER WAIL WENT out last week upon the realisation that Sgt Pepper was 40 years old. It came, of course, with the requisite reverence towards all things Beatleish that has become such a hallmark of our popular cultural canon. I’ve always found the Beatles a bit twee, although I have noticed that saying so has recently become an opinion crime on the same level as Holocaust denial.

What the Beatles did do, however, was to render the previously-assumed-to-be-trivial art of pop music serious, partly through musical experimentation, but perhaps more importantly – influenced, obviously, by Bob Dylan – through ditching the default “I love you, yes I do” lyric for words that sounded like poetry.

I've always found it hard to gauge whether lyrics are really important in pop music. Recently, in this paper, Caitlin Moran stated – correctly – that the best pop single yet made is Abba’s Dancing Queen, the lyrics of which – “see that girl/ watch that scene/ digging the Dancing Queen” – aren’t, let’s face it, up there with Sonnet 17, but work absolutely perfectly for the euphoria that the song is intended to create. It might be that only rock critics are really bothered about lyrics, because it gives them something easier to dissect than the elusive abstraction of the music itself.

Moreover, it’s difficult not to look a bit male menopausy, a bit desperately-trying-to-remain-rebellious-at-50-while-still-showing-your-academic-credentials to go on about how Eminem is a better poet than Keats.

Having said all that – and in full expectation of all these qualifications being missed out when I’m quoted in Pseuds Corner – I think thousands of pop lyrics do approach the quality of literature. Jarvis Cocker can be as good a poet of the modern English condition as Simon Armitage or Wendy Cope: think of Common People – “I took her to a supermarket/ I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere/ So it started/ There”, where the deadness both of the Somerfield environment and the male character’s expectation is all rendered brilliantly in the flat deadpan abruptness of “There” – but also of the devastatingly throw-away mortality-realisation of “Funny how it all falls away” in Help the Aged. Morrissey too, when he avoids the literal, is an astonishing word-smith – it is poetry, both witty and poignant, to describe an episode of impotence in the face of heterosexual advance with the words “And Sorrow’s Native Son/ He will not smile for anyone” as he does in Pretty Girls Make Graves, although for me his most plangent line is “And when a train goes by/ It’s such a sad sound” from the obscure track Nowhere Fast.

In my opinion, pop music’s more serious lyricists get better once they grow out of the Dylan/Beatles 1960s inspiration, where any high-flown, surreal words would do – “the ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face” etc etc – and start writing about real life. David Bowie, far and away the greatest genius in popular music – his early words sound great but essentially don’t mean much more than “It’s the 1970s, it’s grim, let’s pretend we’re from space!” On his 2002 album, Heathen,however, the song Everyone Says “Hi” sounds like a fairly light number about contacting a friend on holiday, until you rehear the opening lines: “Said you took a big trip/ They said you moved away/ Happened oh so quietly/ They say” and realise that the song is about death (his father’s death, in fact): at which point, in a classical poetic movement, the whole meaning and power of the piece shifts.

There are lots of others – Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Alex Turner, The Streets – but, in pop, you won’t find poetry just in the big hitters. I can’t think of a more cleverly caustic line to describe a remembered fling than Tinita Tikaram’s characterisation of it as nothing more than a “twist in my sobriety”, an idea echoed by Gary Barlow, in his masterpiece – I’m not being ironic – Back For Good,with “In the twist of separation, you excelled at being free”.

So many fragments of songs from all sources resonate in my fortysomething head: “I see a bad moon rising”, “he has a future in British Steel”, “don’t you know desire’s a terrible thing”, “tastes like chocolate never tasted before”. Whoever the artist might be, applying literary critical techniques to pop lyrics is interesting, even though doing so will no doubt lead to tired vitriol on Grumpy OldMen about how next thing you know, it’ll be university courses in Girls Aloud. Which I would be happy to attend, and not just for the obvious reasons, but also because it might finally sort out for me how much lyrics matter anyway. It might be the case that “Something kinda ooh/ jumping on my tutu” – for anyone who doesn't know, the chorus of their last hit, yes, Something Kinda Ooh – may be, in song, all you really need to say.

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