Mike and Couch Grouch,

You cannot compare songs in different eras. You have to deal with what you are working with now. In this day and age Hey good looking, what you got cooking, would not be used in natural speech. That is what has changed. And comparing songs like that to today's music, no matter what you think of it, does no good. And to say that none of these songs are being written today is pure hogwash, but I am not going to get into that with you.

The facts of the matter are as follows. Most writers who are not artists usually wind up trying to make inroads in Nashville because that is the last place that artists do cut outside songs. Aside from VERY few examples, there are no rock or pop cuts. Those sides of the business have been writer/artist since 1964 when the Beatles changed the definition of the format.

It is like saying "well if we had Micky Mantle of Babe Ruth playing now.." it is nonsense because they are DEAD. Yes, a lot of the songs you mention have time on their side, because they came in in a different era. That doesn't nessasarily mean they would work if they were new songs in this day and age.

I sit around and listen to people bringing songs in all the time that sound reminicent of those songs. They don't work today. And when you preface Bruce Springsteen and artists that started thirty years ago, they are the first people to tell you their music would not work with that now. formats have changed, human perspectives have changed. How they view music has changed. Now that can be bad and good.

Personally I love older songs. Play them all the time. But knowing that they are hits many times because we grew up with them have fondness for them doesn't nessasaily mean they are great songs. Many are. But not all. Margaritaville is not exactly explaining the mysteries of the Universe, but it is played somewhere all day every day.

At the times of those songs the current writers you talk about, Lennon and McCartney, Hank Williams, etc. might reference songs from their youth that no one has heard of today and THEY all thought they would last forever. Generations change and you either change or adapt or get left behind. And all the complaining in the world doesn't do much good for anybody.

The subject of this thread is perfect verses non perfect rhymes,Somebody gets a review from TAXI or other sources that say the same things over and over, predictable rhymes. And bringing up a song from forty years ago doesn't nessasarily translate.

I am not potificating or pretending to be the voice of anything other than sitting here watching writers hit the same glass wall time after time after time. I am simply trying to say "Hey, there is a glass wall here." If you want to hit it over and over, that is up to you.

MAB