Top 10 Songs with Unusually Long Lyrics
There are many lists about lengthy songs in terms of duration, but not about songs with long lyrics.Longer songs usually also have longer lyrics, but not always. The longest songs do not necessarily have the longest lyrics because some shorter songs are very fast and/or the singer performs the lyrics quickly. Additionally, some songs include long instrumental sections that reduce the overall lyric content.
I used the number of characters (excluding spaces) as the most reliable measurement because, for example, the number of lines can be misleading - there are both long lines and short lines. The number of words can also be misleading because there are long words and short words.
In my original remix, the song order is objective, as the songs with the highest number of characters (excluding spaces) are placed at the top. However, you can vote and create remixes without any restrictions.
Some of my favorite songs of all time are on this list. These songs feature great music and lyrics. And yes, their lyrics are undeniably long.
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.
Characters (no spaces): 6,305
Characters (with spaces): 7,696
Words: 1,540
Characters (no spaces) - 6,274
Characters (with spaces) - 7,900
Pages - 5
Words - 1,602
Lines - 253
Genre: Progressive Power Metal (Duration - 22:26)
Characters (no spaces) - 4,585
Characters (with spaces) - 5,718
Pages - 4
Words - 1,088
Lines - 255
Genre: Progressive Power Metal (Duration - 14:06)
Hansi Kürsch is one of the fastest metal singers. He sings more words per minute than most other metal singers. He doesn't sing fast all the time, but when he does, it's really fast.
My second favorite song ever. These lyrics are superb.
Yep, a total of 7,515 characters for Part I and Part II.
Duration:
Thick as a Brick, Part I - 22:40
Thick as a Brick, Part II - 21:06
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?
Thanks for this one, vr46.
And for the correct number of:
Characters (no spaces): 3,420
Characters (with spaces): 4,165
Words: 870
Thanks, RaRaRasputin, great addition. Very impressive.
Damn, for a title only three letters long, this song has ridiculously long lyrics.
Characters (no spaces) - 3,126
Characters (with spaces) - 3,960
Pages - 2
Words - 819
Lines - 102
Genre: Progressive Power Metal (Duration - 11:00)
Characters (no spaces) - 2,367
Characters (with spaces) - 2,932
Pages - 2
Words - 548
Lines - 84
Genre: Heavy Metal (Duration - 18:01)
The Newcomers
Characters (no spaces) - 2,376
Characters (with spaces) - 2,965
Pages - 2
Words - 573
Lines - 61
Genre: Singer-Songwriter, Contemporary Folk (Duration 10:31)
Benji is a very wordy album. This song is very sad and personal. Highly recommended, as is the album in general.
I like the guitar breakdown and lyrics on this song, but this song is overlong.
Characters (no spaces) - 3,087
Characters (with spaces) - 3,747
Pages - 3
Words - 652
Lines - 111
Genre: Thrash Metal (Duration - 8:29)
One of my favorite thrash songs.
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.
Characters (no spaces) - 2,667
Characters (with spaces) - 3,290
Pages - 3
Words - 597
Lines - 158
Genre: Progressive Metal (Duration - 24:00)
Characters (no spaces) - 2,405
Characters (with spaces) - 3,010
Pages - 2
Words - 590
Lines - 83
Genre: Progressive Power Metal (Duration - 7:56)
Characters (no spaces) - 2,336
Characters (with spaces) - 2,845
Pages - 2
Words - 498
Lines - 89
Genre: Heavy Metal (Duration - 16:26)
Characters (no spaces) - 1,566
Characters (with spaces) - 1,953
Words - 380
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.
Characters (no spaces) - 2,101
Characters (with spaces) - 2,613
Pages - 2
Words - 502
Lines - 90
Genre: Power Metal (Duration - 13:37)
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.
Characters (no spaces) - 1,679
Characters (with spaces) - 2,115
Pages - 3
Words - 423
Lines - 120
Genre: Symphonic Metal (Duration - 8:56)
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)