First, I didn't say "all", I said "many". Second, I said it was my personal opinion. Third and most importantly, I certainly didn't mean that songs are written with no coherence whatsoever, like the quotes in the fool-the-spam-filter thread. Fourth, I said "deep meaning". Q.E.D.: Yes, Jackie, I realized all the points you made, and thought I made accomodation for them in my rebuttal. But let's not lump "Yummy Yummy" and other fluff bubblegum pop crap with serious songwriting, otherwise you could cite the Archies,
"Sugar, Sugar", The Partridge Family, Bobby Sherman, and on and on...and, BTW, Britney Spears' lyrics are just plain
bad, even for that "genre." I had the misfortune of watching them float across the screen in caption at the hospital one night...yeech, I dunno how anyone could attempt to sing that stuff.
America, as much as I liked them, were notorious for being weak in the lyric department, and penned what I have always voted as the worst lyric line in the history of rock, from
Ventura Highway, "alligator lizards in the air." No drug known to man can make *anything out of that garbage.
And, sure
A Horse With No Name was weird, but it was a *contrived weirdness...if it didn't, at least, *sound like a story, no one would've bought into it at the time.
And a song doesn't always have to strive for depth to be good...humor works, too. The storytelling of the true troubadour takes different avenues to hook into the deeper perspectives of life and love. But depth also comes through the fusion of the words and music, too. That's why, say, a love song written by Cole Porter has eons more depth that a love song written by Britney Spears.
In short: serious songwriters care about their words.
And the craft of songwriting necessitates some meaningful sequential lyric, no matter how light or worthless it may be...even "Yummy Yummy" tells a small story, for what it is.
You just can't throw words on music like you can splatter paint over a canvas, it just doesn't work.
