Music is a universal language understood by people across the world, not only today but since the beginning of time and until the end. Music connects people it is an outlet of emotion that artists use to share with the world a story about their life, much like in poetry. Along with music poetry has been shared since the beginning of time begging the question, are the two really all that different? Poetry is stories told with rhythm and line breaks, with accompanying tone and even sound of the voice. Sound familiar? Much like poetry, lyrical music is a story told orally with accompanying tone, rhythm, and music.

The song “Sailing” by Christopher Cross is an example of lyrical music that fits quite closely into the format of poetry, like most songs it is split into verses that are structurally similar to the stanzas of poetry but more specifically the words and ideas. The main choros of sailing goes as follows “Sailing/Takes me away to where I’ve always heard it could be/Just a dream and the wind to carry me/And soon I will be free” Just the choros alone is full of meaning, and can be analyzed as if it were poetry not only is it structurally almost identical but it can also be analyzed the same way. In the choros of sailing the speaker is a man who dreams of leaving where ever it is he is and to a place that seems like a fantasy to him. But unlike a prose passage, the song uses images in the language as well as the tone and musical background to give an even fuller image that would be given if the speaker were to simply say sailing takes me to a better place. Which is the main idea of the pong/poem.