Influence

British music-hall tradition – vaudeville sentimentality, comic novelty.

Black American rhythm-and-blues vocal and rhythm style.

Dylan's lyric ambition and folk-singer-songwriter craft as a model.

Lyrics written under or about psychedelic drug experiences – altered perception, expanded consciousness, hallucinatory imagery

Holly's simple, direct love-song lyricism and earnest emotional delivery

Indian philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, or other Eastern spiritual traditions shaping the lyrical worldview

Drawing on canonical literary works, mythology, poetry, or the Western literary tradition

Berry's conversational storytelling style, teenage slang, and first-person rock and roll narrative voice

Variety-show music-hall sentimentality and novelty.

Lewis Carroll's nonsense language, logical absurdity, and surreal wordplay evoking Alice in Wonderland

Folk songwriter Donovan's gentle acoustic, Travis-picking style.

The lyric borrows country writing: plain-spoken address, a told story, a resigned narrator.

Late-1950s doo-wop vocal-group harmony and progression.

British radio comedy The Goon Show – absurdist humor and wordplay.

Early-1960s American girl-group vocal style and arrangement.

Tape-music tradition of Pierre Schaeffer – recorded sounds as composition.

The lyric uses blues idiom: first-person complaint, repeated opening lines, plain declarations of trouble.

Acoustic folk-song traditions – Anglo, American, or Celtic.