Feedback on lyrics

It's hardly bull. 'Good' is a subjective concept when it's in the context of personal opinion.

A bridge is an objective thing. Comparing a bridge, which can be seen to either stand or fall, to a song, which can be 'felt' to be good or bad or any number of things in between, is a really crap analogy.

'Good' is a term subjective to the viewer.

Look, you said:



I demonstrated that that claim was false. You never said anything about "objective things" (a taulogical syntactic construct if ever I heard one).

Do you now want to rescind your claim?

I never said what I said without context. In the context of songs, or art, how do you define whether something is good or bad?

Can I look at the Mona Lisa and think it's 'sh*t'? Yea I can. Most people don't, but I do. It's a woman standing for a portrait. I think it's crap.

The same way, I think Blower's Daughter's a great song. How do I define its greatness? Is there a checklist for good songs or good art?

Yea, there is, but obviously my checklist and your checklist for what make a 'great' song or a great piece of art differ entirely.

It's hardly fair to take what I say out of context and refute it by turning it into a standalone statement.

If I say 'in the primate kingdom, a human body has a higher body fat percentage than any other animal', would it be fair for you to take that and quote me as 'a human body has a higher body fat percentage than any other animal'?

No, because you have qualified that statement. You did not qualify the statement "'Good' is a term subjective to the viewer."

Go back and look, I did not quote it out of context. It was a complete sentence with no precursor, a stand alone claim.

The Mona Lisa is a good example, you personally think its ****, but its not, its one of the greatest paintings in the history of mankind. The problem is not with the painting, the problem is that you personally don't know enough about art to be able to recognise quality when you see it.

Personally, I don't know enough about art to be able to comment, but, unlike you, I am not so arrogant and naive to think that my uninformed assessment matters a damn.

That is what this is about. You don't know anything about music or songwriting and you can't just accept the fact that your uninformed opinion is completely irrelevant here. Its just sheer arrogance.

Do you think that one verse of the bible can be unanimously taken as a standalone claim or does it need context with both the verses before and after it, regardless of whether they are in different paragraphs or not?

If I decide to apply the term 'pricklefruit' to a pineapple in a paragraph, then in the next paragraph say 'a pricklefruit is really tasty', are you gonna have a clue what I'm on about if you're only quoted the statement in the second paragraph but not the statement in the first?

You're saying I don't know anything about music. Right. And you're also saying that you're not arrogant enough to comment on art, since you know nothing about it, by your own admission, yet you've just given your apparently factual, informed opinion on art - 'It's not sh*t, it's just that you, Othelo, don't know anything about art' - and you've also proposed your opinion on the OP's music as a factual proof that his song is sh*t, alongside your opinion (factual proof) that Damien Rice is a sh*t songwriter.

Now, I'd like to ask you, in the key of D minor, what the triad chord with the 7th note as its root is called, because frankly, I can't quite remember. If it goes alongside the 6th note in the scale does that make it a 7th chord? I'm unsure.

Aside from the fact that I've been a music student for three years and am going further to study it, alongside creative writing, the point still stands that subjective taste is exactly that - subjective. You like to look at the Mona Lisa, I personally don't see what the fuss is about. I'm not interested because I don't actually know enough about the painting to give a toss. You don't like soppy songs, that for me, should make you realize it would be a fairly silly idea for you to try to give unbiased feedback on one.

But hey, I know jack sh*t about music or songwriting anyway, who am I?

Its still the 7th regardless of what chord it follows dude. Why don't you ask your music teacher if you're confused?

That made no sense.

The notes in the scale of D minor are D, E, F, G, A, Bb and C -- 'C' being the 7th note of the scale.

If a triad chord in the key of D minor has its root on the 7th note of the scale, then the root note will be a C natural.

The triad will be C, E, and G. That's a straight C major chord. It's not a 7th at all. And I wasn't talking about one chord following another or whatever, I'm talking about adding notes to one chord.

My second question was if that same triad (C major) is accompanied by the 6th note in the scale of d minor, will it be a regular 7th chord?

The answer to the second question is a no, it will be a dominant 7 chord.

The 6th note in the scale is a Bb, so if I add the B flat to the C major chord I get C, E, G, Bb, which makes the chord C7. If it were C, E, G and B it would be Cmaj7.

Anyway, point was I'm not ignorant of music.

I get all that, I don't see what it has to do with lyric writing and whether or not trite cliches should be considered "good lyrics" simply because a lot of poorly written pop songs happen to feature them.

The point isn't about whether the concepts are good or bad or have cliches, the point is that personal musical tastes and opinion should be left aside as much as possible in teaching the formation and construction of lyrics.

If you write really violent lyrics and I don't like the concept of violence, that shouldn't dictate that I tell you 'no, those lyrics are sh*t'. I should encourage you to write about whatever you want to write about, whether it's a cheesy idea or a cliche or a violent bit of macabre hate-prose.

It doesn't matter what my personal opinion of the subject matter is, what matters is me encouraging you to learn to write it in a more relateable way or in a way that suits your personal tastes, not mine.

You seem to think 'schooling' the OP on lyrics is getting him to think like you or write like you or like the kind of music you like. Literally though, that has absolutely nothing to do with it.