ABSTRACT
The "poet-composer" identity created to describe singer-songwriters in the nascent phase of their movement encapsulates how lingering cultural biases about art in the United States continued to inform the construction of popular song in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In 1968, New York Times critic William Kloman profiled newcomer musician Leonard Cohen, describing Cohen as a "poet-novelist-composer-singer." The chapter provides the origins of the poet-composer persona within the tensions between the commercial music industry and the North American folk revival. It presents the marketing of Leonard Cohen's first two albums to show how his status as a poet informed the critical reception of his work. The chapter investigates how Joni Mitchell's song writing style, which transitioned from communal folk ballads to complex, soloistic melodies, helped perpetuate the idea that singer-songwriters composed art songs rather than pop songs. It analyses how this transition in song writing style resulted in differentiated listening practices between the folk revival and singer-songwriter movement.
