Top 10 Songs with Unusually Long Lyrics

There many lists about lengthy songs in terms of duration but not about long lyrics.
Longer songs usually also have longer lyrics but not always the longest songs have the longest lyrics because some shorter songs are very fast and/or the singer sings very fast. Or because some songs have long instrumental sections.

I used the number of characters (with no spaces) as the most reliable measurement because for example the number of lines can be misleading - there are long lines and short lines. The number of words can also be be misleading - there are long words and short words.

In my original remix the song order is objective because the songs with the biggest number of characters (with no spaces) are on top. But you can vote and make remixes without any restrictions.

Some of my most favorite songs of all time are on this list. These songs have great music and lyrics. And yes, their lyrics are long.
The Top Ten
1 Rap God - Eminem

This one even got a place in the Guinness World Records for 'most words in a hit song'.
Enough said.

Especially since it's around 6 minutes when some of these others are around 10-20 minutes.

2 Mirror of Souls - Theocracy
3 And Then There Was Silence - Blind Guardian
4 Thick as a Brick - Jethro Tull

My second favorite song ever. These lyrics are superb.

5 Apocalyptic Infinity - Spongebozz

I mean, the contributions so far are nice and all but...

Characters (spaces): 20,220
Characters (no spaces): 17,495
Pages: 8
Words: 3,076
Genre: hardcore hip hop, battle rap, diss track
Duration: 18:29

No chorus, and each line contains perfect multisyllabic rhyming and other complex rhetorical figures. Who says hip hop is dead by 2017?

6 Supper's Ready - Genesis
7 American Pie - Don McLean
8 There Was Only One Choice - Harry Chapin
9 I Am - Theocracy

Damn, for a title only three letters long, this song has ridiculously long lyrics.

10 Empire of the Clouds - Iron Maiden
The Contenders
11 Jesus of Suburbia - Green Day

I like the guitar breakdown and lyrics on this song, but this song is overlong.

12 Black Prophecies - Dark Angel
13 B.O.B. - Outkast
14 Octavarium - Dream Theater

It's not usual for prog songs to have lots of lyrics, but I've got to pay my respects to DT for doing this.

15 The Devil Glitch - Chris Butler
16 Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
17 As the World Bleeds - Theocracy
18 Dante's Inferno - Iced Earth
19 Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
20 The Odyssey - Symphony X

I don't know why the person who added it wrote there were 12,896 characters (no spaces), which I think isn't correct. But I would like to thank this visitor for adding the song because it's very good and is pretty long.

Characters (no spaces): 2,944
Characters (with spaces): 3,554
Words: 718
Duration: 24:09.

21 Keeper of the Seven Keys - Helloween
22 Albuquerque - Weird Al Yankovic

This isn't just a song. This is my upbringing. He is my father. He is my home.

I used to live in Albuquerque. The lyrics are long and surprisingly, and scarily accurate.

23 Mortal Man - Kendrick Lamar
24 Wheel of Time - Blind Guardian
25 Tag Des Jüngsten Gerichts - Kay One

Now this one may be tricky. The song was not released on any album or single. Kay One just uploaded a video to this song, which is partly autobiographic and partly a diss track aimed at Germany's most successful rapper, Bushido, to his YouTube channel. The original video has since been taken down but re-uploaded by other users and other websites. Why do I say all this? To show you that there is no official audio version.

While the video contains about 20 minutes of pure storytelling rapping without a chorus or similar, it also contains about 5 minutes of talking. At certain points, recorded phone calls and interviews that expose Bushido and other artists involved in their relationship get played, and Kay One comments on them. I don't know if you regard those skits in between the main song as part of the lyrics as well, but nevertheless, even without them, I'm sure that this would be the longest song so far. Every lyrics website, however, included the talking in the lyrics:

Characters (spaces): 29,218
Characters (no spaces): 24,774
Pages: 13
Words: 4,967
Genre: hardcore hip hop, storytelling hip hop, diss track
Duration: 25:32 (I edited a version with only the rapping to listen to, it lasts 20:09 minutes)

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