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Hey guys,

My style of music is more pop/rock than country where my understanding is the lyrics are much more specific. However I keep hearing general advice like "be more specific" and "invite the listener in with detail", but I'm not really hearing this occurring in a lot of mainstream hits - e.g. Hello, Love me Like You Do, Chandelier. None of these songs really have much detail in them but all were massive hits.
Has anyone got any thoughts on this?
Thanks

Hey batman,
Great inquiry about lyrics!

I believe one main point, at least for music targeted for film/tv, is to focus on emotional detail in stead of physical detail.
If you read some of those lyrics you've listed with those eyes, they are full of emotional detail.

Like the two first verses of "Love me like you do" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Me_like_You_Do ..

You're the light, you're the night
You're the color of my blood
You're the cure, you're the pain
You're the only thing I wanna touch
Never knew that it could mean so much, so much

You're the fear, I don't care
Cause I've never been so high
Follow me to the dark
Let me take you past our satellites
You can see the world you brought to life, to life

Robin Frederick writes a lot more about this distinction of physical/ emotional detail in her books on hit songwriting, and songwriting for tv/film. Well worth reading.

I think you might be mixing two different things, story telling in country with specific names and places in film and television.

We can assume emotion of some sort would be necessary in any song.

Specifics and detail are just a part of the imagery. How specific and detailed depend a lot on the theme.

I'm not sure lyrics technically have a style or musical genre. I suppose you can stereotype, beer with country, wine with adult contemporary, whiskey with country, New York, not country, rum with caribbean, marijuana with reggae...
And pop/rock, anything goes??

So basically a song starts with an emotion, because if you really don't care one way or the other about something, you certainly don't write a song about it. The emotion is the theme. Then the theme is developed.

As long as you understand that a song that mentions Chicago, is probably not going to be used in a scene featuring Atlanta, in film, I think that pretty much explains why you wouldn't submit a song with specific names and dates to a blind listing for a film.

[quote None of these songs really have much detail in them but all were massive hits.][/quote]

I agree that for at least a couple of them, wouldn't win any awards lyrically,lol! They are just part of the whole package. I'm not sure if the best lyrics in the world would survive a poor music match! That's more about prosody though. The "rules" are merely a guide to get you closer to matching the music with the lyrics and emotion. Rules are based on what generally "works", they are not science. The rules for music were based on the compositions of the masters, not rules written by the masters, and they occasionally broke those rules, which were not rules they followed because the rules didn't come along until later, written by others based on their works,lol! And rules change, unlike science. But in general your chances of success are much greater following the rules than not, and your failures are usually accessed by the rules. When there become so many successes by breaking a rule, that particular rule usually changes.

Cool thanks for the responses.
I'm not really writing for film/tv so issues with being specific don't bother me.
Yes I am trying to convey emotion with my lyrics; it's just I don't have a specific way of going about it.

Will try not to fuss over it too much and just let the emotion come out however it does...