Here’s something my mate Matthew and I used to talk about sometimes over a couple of beers at the Railway Pub in West Hampstead, London, around 1995. When we weren’t talking about cricket, or girls, or books, or history (he’s a historian), we talked about music. Specifically, ‘pop’ or rock music, to use those inadequate definitions.

And because he is an academic and I had recently witnessed the death of my academic career (not with a bang, but a whimper), we would talk about music as if it was great literature or a rich historic record — both of which, of course, it can be.

Matthew’s knowledge was vast — far greater than mine. And not having spent most of his life in countries subject to economic and cultural sanctions, as I had, he had actually been to gigs by bands I still perceived through a glimmering mythical haze: Elvis Costello! The Stranglers! Crowded House! And many I’d never heard of.

But what I would pontificate beerily about was that some of the best lyricists would fit into the kind of old-fashioned lit-crit close analysis I had spent years beating my brains out over. Ways of revealing the beauties of Shakespeare’s and Milton’s and Wordsworth’s poetry could also work for songwriters like, say, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits (the early work), and Bruce Springsteen.

Now I have to acknowledge at this point that there are two main camps when it comes to The Boss: those who can’t stand the man’s brawny, anthemic performances, and those who are right. That is, who recognise a storyteller, a balladeer, a kind of folk poet who taps into some timeless themes and techniques (knowingly or unknowingly) to portray the emotional states of dreamers, lost boys, wanderers and thieves. And he can do this with a guitar and harmonica (spend some lonely nights listening to the stark tales of ‘Nebraska’ for this) or with a large, tight, versatile band in front of tens of thousands in a sports stadium.

There are many, many things to be said here, and given world enough and time, I can and will bore you with some of them, but in the interests of getting on with it, here’s an example of what I mean.

In the sonnet tradition, one of the rhetorical strategies the ‘speaker’ (not always the poet, as we know, children) can employ in expressing their emotional condition is what critic J B Leishman dubbed ‘the catalogue of uncompensating delights.’ The lovelorn bard will list all number of toys, experiences, possessions and distractions he/she has access to, none of which can make up for the absence of their lover. And absent lovers were big in the sonnet tradition, I can tell you.

Anyway, consider the ditty ‘Ain’t Got You’ by our man Bruce. We shall start with the first verse, or stanza as it would be called if it was a poem printed in a book.

I got the fortunes of heaven in diamonds and gold,
I got all the bonds, baby, that the bank could hold;
I got houses ‘cross the country, honey, end to end,
And everybody buddy wants to be my friend;
Well I got all the riches baby any man ever knew:
But the only thing I ain’t got, honey, I ain’t got you.

Pretty clear, right? He’s rich — all the trappings of capitalism are within his possession, but it’s not enough, because it is as nothing without his girl. There is some hyperbole in the description of his houses, which are so many they seem to span the entire nation if placed ‘end to end.’

And may I quickly point out the deft use of the classical rhetorical technique of epideixis, or ‘pointing’, where he repeatedly invokes his girl — ‘honey’ — to emphasise that it is she, and she alone, that this declamation is for. (It’s also useful for filling out the meter so the lyrics fit the tune.)

Speaking of meter, the list unfolds in rhyming couplets which are not self-contained pairs, but rather loosely channels the thoughts — it is, after all, a list.

I got a house full of Rembrandt and priceless art,
And all the little girls they want to tear me apart;
When I walk down the street people stop and stare,
Well you’d think I might be thrilled but, baby, I don’t care
‘Cause I got more good luck honey than old King Farouk
But the only thing I ain’t got baby I ain’t got you.

Here we turn to things less material than in verse 1: art (‘priceless’, so also a measure of his wealth and material possessions), fame — including lustful young women who aren’t a patch on the one true love — as well as luck. But it’s all as nothing without her.

The use of King Farouk as an example of luck is ironic: His Majesty Farouk I, by the grace of God, King of Egypt and the Sudan, was booted off his throne in 1952 and died in luxurious Italian exile seven years later.

And so we take it, in the words of Mr James Brown, to the bridge:

I got a big diamond watch sittin’ on my wrist,
I try to tempt you baby but you just resist,
I made a deal with the devil babe I won’t deny,
Until I got you in my arms I can’t be satisfied.

Another expensive possession, the diamond-encrusted timepiece, can’t make up for the singer’s inability to overcome his beloved’s reluctance. Indeed, it reminds him of the passage of time, spent in fruitless waiting for his love — something Shakespeare majored on in his sonnets.* The singer then confesses to selling his soul (something ’30s bluesman Robert Johnson was reputed to have done to gain his virtuoso guitar chops) but to no avail — and here he sums up his predicament: nothing but she will fulfil his desire.

Moving right along, the song climaxes (which is another thing the singer cannot do):

I got a pound of caviar sitting home on ice,
I got a fancy foreign car that rides like paradise,
I got a hundred pretty women knockin’ down my door
And folks want to kiss me I ain’t even seen before,
I been around the world and all across the seven seas
Been paid a king’s ransom for doin’ what comes naturally,
But I’m still the biggest fool, honey, this world ever knew
‘Cause the only thing I ain’t got baby, I ain’t got you.

It’s a summary of all that went before: wealth, fame, lustful fans. Note the tinge of impostor syndrome in the admission that his riches come from what ‘comes naturally’ — his work requires no effort and yet is rewarded disproportionately, another unsatisfying experience.

And while verses one and two require six lines to reach the refrain, “I ain’t got you,” here that resolution is delayed by another couplet, extending the climactic tension to eight lines. Yet the song does not resolve with this repetition, but merely re-states the same inescapable fact — he still doesn’t have what he truly desires.

Now of course, this is not ‘poetry’ as we are programmed to think of it. It is not high-toned, but rather demotic. He does not say, “I have” all these things; he says “I got” them. But Bruce is a blue-collar guy. He does not talk in flowery, clever language, but in the lingo of the production line, the steel plant, the streets of Asbury Park, New Jersey. And it’s authentic, at least to the ears of most of his fans.

All in all, what we have here is a needlessly dry dissection of a song that can be played in less time. But isn’t it also a little interesting that using this rhetorical device works just as well for our Bruce as it did for 16th-Century sonneteers? All part of that thang called romantic love which has been evolving since at least the 12th Century courtly love guys and which we still understand today.

This is what Matthew and I would go on about over our pints of warm London Pride. Small wonder we never met any girls at the Railway.

*Happy Birthday, dear Bard.