Songs For A Tailor - Lyrics

Lyrics

Pete Brown's lyrics have been particularly divisive. Brown, a successful poet in the early 1960s, had been collaborating with Bruce for some time, writing lyrics for such Cream hits as "White Room" and "Sunshine of Your Love". The lyrics he wrote for Songs for a Tailor are typically poetic and heavily inspired by literary themes, with the Shakespeareean "He the Richmond" and the horror-infused "Weird of Hermiston".

The first Rolling Stone review judged the lyrics as unsuccessful, dismissing them as "silly" and primarily burdened by an overabundance of literary references. 2006's 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time and the Artists, Stories and Secrets Behind Them also disparaged the lyricist, stating that his "pretentious lyrics fail to connect", an inaccessibility that the book suggests combined with the lack of "instrumental fireworks" to prevent the album from reaching better commercial success. "The musicianship," that work says, particularly referencing "Bruce's soulful vocals", "remains timeless." But in later review of Bruce's work, Fricke regarded the songwriting more highly, questioning whether "anybody, beside Bruce and Brown, write songs like that anymore" and suggesting the cd version of the Bruce compilation Willpower specifically so that the lyrics could be read.