Many people with dyslexia excel at painting, sketching and design, but today we’re thinking about the other side of the arts and exploring some of the greatest musical minds who have dyslexia.
Florence Welch – London-based indie superstar of the 2010s, style icon for redheads everywhere and potential time-travelling long lost muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, we salute you. After exploding into the scene with the band Florence and the Machine in July 2009, she became the first British female headliner of the Glastonbury Rock Festival this century, and cemented her place around the late indie pantheon with albums such as Lungs and Ceremonials that reached number one in eight countries worldwide. She was diagnosed with dyslexia in primary school, and pursued a degree at Camberwell College of Arts before dropping out to focus on music.
As well as being one of the decade’s foremost female lyricists, Welch has also expanded her writing catalogue into the poetic and published a book of verse entitled Useless Magic: Lyrics, Poetry and Sermons with Penguin in November 2020.
Start With: Lungs (2009), Ceremonials (2011)
Greatest Lyric: ‘And I never wanted anything from you, except everything you had and what was left after that too’; a bit like us at an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet.
2. Sir Tom Jones
Here’s one for your gran – the Welsh crooner Sir Tom Jones has dyslexia. The star of The Voice recently opened up about growing up with it, and what it meant to him as a kid.
Speaking on BBC Radio 2, Sir Tom revealed that he was often told that he was ‘lazy’ when he was at school, and was consistently being told that he needed to ‘try harder’. He wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until he was in his early teens – due to contracting the dangerous respiratory illness Tuberculosis when he was twelve years old, he was homeschooled for a number of months, and only with this kind of specialist tuition were his literacy differences recognised for what they were.
Start With: Delilah (1968), Reload (1999)
Greatest Lyric: Tom Jones only started writing his own lyrics at the age of 62, so we’re not sure we can get away with this one – but belting out ‘What’s New Pussycat’ is one of the iconic late-night family-wedding staples that’s right up there with Dancing Queen, Rock the Boat and Uptown Funk, so we’ll go with those.
3. Cher
Whether you know her for her pantheon of 80s top-ten hits, her role in Mamma Mia, or her antics going viral with her hilarious and pithy tweets, Cher is a household name. What’s less well-known is that she has dyslexia, and often found herself struggling in school and having to learn solely by listening as her reading skills struggled to keep up. She even ended up dropping out of eleventh grade after just two weeks of classes. However, when faced with her literacy differences and the lack of help available in the 1950s school system, she dedicated herself to a career in music and television to win acclaim that’s spanned over five decades, and even bagged herself an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1988.
…and let’s face it, even these lofty achievements pale in comparison to how much of an absolute bop Believe is.
Start With: Heart of Stone (1989), Believe (1998)
Greatest Lyric: As music fans with dyslexia, we’re big fans of ‘words are like weapons, they wound you sometimes’ from If I Could Turn Back Time. Whilst sung by Cher, it was actually written by the legendary American record producer Diane Warren. Shame nobody thought to send her a ReaderPen!
4. Lou Reed
Famous for both music and poetry, Lou Reed was the guitarist, singer and principal songwriter for the iconic 1960s rock band The Velvet Underground. Whilst somewhat of a sleeper hit during the band’s lifetime, their music went on to influence both the American punk, Riot Grrl and New Wave musical movements, and has a go-to vibe that keeps indie film soundtracks alive with a fresh burst of Cannes-friendly nihilism.
Despite struggling with literacy differences and often struggling with letter reversal, Reed was awarded a degree in English from Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and his love of literature shines through in his often heavily referential lyrics - the works of William S. Burroughs, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Raymond Chandler feature heavily in his early writing. Reed often worked with other stars of the 1960s alt culture world, such as Andy Warhol- who as well as designing the iconic cover art for some of his records, had dyslexia, just like Reed himself.
Start With: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), White Light/White Heat (1968)
Greatest Lyric: ‘Does anybody need to be told over and over that spitting in the wind comes back at you twice as hard?’ Er… lovely.
5. Noel Gallagher
Ah, the Gallagher brothers. Famous on one side of the pond for bringing Britpop to the masses in a tense display of three-chord sibling rivalry, and famous on the other side for… er, walking out of a Rolling Stone photoshoot due to boredom and being found in a bar a few streets away. Oasis are a bit of musical Marmite – you either love them or hate them, but whatever your stance you can’t deny that these lads had some of the most memorable lyrics of the 1990s. There's a big influence from another famous musician with dyslexia in a lot of their work too - John Lennon of The Beatles fame.
Noel Gallagher – he’s the songwriter, the one who had the shorter hair and was occasionally seen wearing clothes other than a fishtail parka back in the day - is often open about his dyslexia in the press and how it posed problems for him when writing songs and sharing them with the band. “Sometimes I give lyrics to Liam and just… two key words of the sentence will be missing,” he commented in Q 1996. He’s since gone on to have a stellar solo career with his own band, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, and you can occasionally see him and his brother Liam re-ignite their three-decade feud on Twitter over anything from football and politics to …Jedward.
Start With: Definitely Maybe (1994), Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (2011)
Greatest Lyric: ‘And after alllll, you’re my wonderwaaalllll’ - sorry, we don’t make the rules.