Song poem usually refers to song lyrics that have been set to music for a fee. This "service", which has long been disparaged in the music industry, was promoted through small display ads in popular magazines, comic books, tabloids, and similar publications, reading Send in Your Poems - Songwriters Make Thousands of Dollars - Free Evaluation. Those who sent in a poem received a reply claiming that it was a sure-fire hit and offering to have it set to music and recorded by professional musicians for a fee.
The poems would be set to music by in-house composers (parts that they couldn't fit to any known meter or rhythm would be marked "spoken word passage"), and recorded by session musicians (usually working under pseudonyms to avoid union sanctions). Customers would be sent copies of the results, sometimes on compilations with other submissions. Copies were not sent to radio stations despite promises to the contrary.
For some listeners, unusual, amateur lyrics in recordings made by rushed or at least marginally professional musicians almost half a century earlier offer a unique, discordant sound heard nowhere else. The intensity and naiveté of the lyrics combined with the workaday listlessness of the musical performances creates a tension that fuels whatever artistic merit may be found in these relics. Many of the lyrics involve subject matter relating to the passing fads of the day, and thus provide a window into a past pop culture. .
