Mark,

How are you? This is a constant quest that goes within songwriting communities. What IS Songwriting? Much has to do with background, influences and style or genre of music you are doing.

I usually try to describe it as the difference between a classical Dutch Masters painting, say a Michealangelo, Raphael, or Rembrandt. If it is supposed to be a woman with a mysterious smile, it looks like a realistic woman with a Mysterious smile like the Mona Lisa. If it is Men standing around a desk, it looks like men standing around a desk. If it is supposed to be a ceiling with scenes from the Bible, it looks like a ceiling with scenes from the Bibles. The Sistine Chapel.

On the other hand, some lyrics are like a Picasso or Jackson Pollock "splatter painting." It means what you feel like it should mean. Which is right?

Well the fact is, both. They are art and that is very subjective. The common denominator in both is the acceptance by the public.

Most rock, pop, alternative music is written in the more interpretive style with the lyrics often being metaphoric, free style and meant to be cryptic and vague so that the listener can draw their own conclusions.

Country, Americana, Roots, etc, are written more realistic and direct without eliciting interpretations. In country it is not the responsibility of the listener to "fill in the blanks." Both are valid and simply different approaches to the same subject.

But most rock, pop, and alternative, are self contained, meaning the music is written by the artist or a tight group of people in the cirlce of that artist, publishers, producers, band members, friends long time associates. Outside writers need not apply.

Country, while leaning very much that way, still allows for the outside writer. And in some very limited rock writing, Dianne Warren, for instance, outside cuts still come from those writers on the top of the heap.

The approach would be yours to make as what you want your music to do. For me personally, I always write in a very straight forward narrative style. I continuously write reality because if I am going through it, chances are other people too. My goal is to write something that other people hear and go "That is EXACTLY my life, only in a way I have never quite thought of before."

While I don't perform as much as I used to, it is still my goal to be instantly communicable where even people who I don't know at all and are hearing me for the first time will immediately hook into what I am doing. Even at times if they don't speak my language. I once played in Brussel's, Belguim, where a third of the audience did not speak English. But with my grooves, melodies and some fairly universal phrasing, managed to keep them with me throughout the performance.

There is neither right nor wrong in any of this. WRite what YOU feel good about writing. If you feel the cryptic stuff is not for you, don;'t write it or experiment with it and see where it goes. As a writer you should have a large depth of catalogue. Personally it doesn't work for me because I suck at it. I don't really have these deep seated, emotions that only I understand, in my inner recesses of what is left of my brain. I have to speak clearly cause I am not smart enough to do otherwise.

But some do. You should study a lot of music and aklways try to develop and learn. My particular suggestion to all writers is to cowrite as much as possible if nothing else to get a perspective from someone else and help you get outside of yourself. But the great thing about writing is that you can do it anyway you feel free to.
Don't get too confused in it. Somethings don't work for some people. There are people that would think I am too simplistic. That is fine too. I don't write for them. And vice versa.

Enjoy what you do and do it to the best of your ability. Don't worry about the rest.

I wish you well.

MAB