I'm interested in finding more great songwriters across different genres and I want to defeat my own bias, so don't tell me the artist or genre (or maybe put it in <details> tags).

Here are a few of mine -

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds

If you're really as tough as your defenses, you'd let them fall

Tried to deceive me, you only deceived you; what you thought was invisible was only see-through

I said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time"

Emotional luggage, nothing of it, I don't check bags; I just carry on, leave that bullshit in the past

Nothing no scary like a gunman voice when people beg a gunman think twice, and him say no

To turn your sick soul inside out - so that the world, so that the world can watch you die

Coincidentally, not all those songs are necessarily at the top of my recommends, but they are the first memorable one-liners that came to mind. I won't mind if your picks aren't the greatest songs of all time either if the line still hits.

How important are lyrics to you?

For me, the words are probably as big a part of my experience of a song as the music itself. It's unlikely that I'll come back to a song if the lyrics don't speak to me. On the other hand, I know other people who claim not to care about the lyrics at all.

So, I was curious. If you are a person who cares a lot about the lyrics of a song, do you also read poetry? How do you feel about purely instrumental music?

Personally, I can appreciate instrumental music, but it's not something I tend to seek out. I enjoy poetry a lot (probably as much as music), both reading it and listening to it.

I'm interested to see if there's a pattern to this. :)