folkrocker

Hey everyone, as a singer-songwriter, sometimes I find it difficult to balance between my own artistic integrity and the commercial tastes of the public. I work hard on my lyrics and try to make them as meaningful and cliche free as possible. THen I turn on the radio and hear grade-seven creative writing put to music and wonder how that happens. So, the purpose of this thread is to get some opinion on the following questions:

What makes a lyric cheezy to you?

Do you even care about lyrics?

What are some of the worst/cheesiest lyrics you've heard?

How do you balance your own creativity with the public's taste?

Also, let's talk about some artists that have great lyrics. Sometimes it's easier to define good than bad but what we like helps us to determine what we don't and why. Anyway, I hope people will get involved here.

The Bullet

1. Instead of writing a paragraph, I'll make a list of cheesy themes
."Everyone gets sad sometimes"
."You have to saaaaaaave the world!"- Dragoneforce school of cheese
.Love lyrics can go either way, but it's easy to be cheesy with those
."Mom! You don't understand me! **** off!" (and really most music with the singer being younger than he really is)
."Do more charity work; held the world."- as good a message as this is, it still feels cheesy most of the time (not all, though).
2. Yes, but melody is FAR more important for most genres of music.
3. The Ludacris rap on Justin Bieber's Baby has to be one of the cheesiest things I have ever heard.
"When I was 13, I had my first love,
There was nobody that compared to my baby,
And nobody came between us or could ever come above
She had me goin' crazy,
Oh I was starstruck,
She woke me up daily,
Don't need no Starbucks.
She made my heart pound,
And skip a beat when I see her in the street and,
At school on the playground,
But I really wanna see her on the weekend,
She know she got me gazin',
Cuz she was so amazin',
And now my heart is breakin',
But I just keep on sayin'..." No, don't worry, I got that from a lyrics site. I didn't memorise it.
4. My tastes don't have that much in common with the general public. The music I listen to can be somewhat mainstream, say top 40-30 (Muse is a prime example), but I hate Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, all the giant acts. Old songs are another thing. I really like alot of old music that was very mainstream at it's time (Guns 'N Roses, Michael Jackson, Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osborne, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, and Queen just to name a VERY small few), but the public of today? Not really.

Hope this helps.

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http://soundcloud.com/zachary-steuer

Astronomer

Usually something is 'cheesy' to me when it is a cliched, overused, predictable and unoriginal phrase.

And yes, lyrics are quite important to me mainly because I am a very verbal person and I like words/writing. That being said though, if I hear a great song but its lyrics aren't that great, I'm not going to stop listening to it - I will still listen to it and enjoy it.

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