Sk'nDeep, I wanta say I think you made a very eloquent statement about people posting and/or critiquing lyrics (etc) on ATL, and I've felt a tad guilty lately for not responding to others' contributions as much as usual, but only because I've been a little too "inwardly oriented" (plus not online quite so much) lately. But yeah I think it's hugely important (and only fair) for people to give what they want to get. It's just a "balance" thing. I totally agree on that.
But with that said, Frankie I don't think it's a bad thing for anyone at all to give a well-thought-out opinion on a lyric, because either a budding or accomplished artist should welcome an "end-user" opinion from anybody who could represent a potential/future "customer"... and commercial success all comes down to whether something is likable or not. That can be really hard to say in the absence of music, but I kinda feel like a poet is a poet is a poet .... musical poetry does not necessarily have to be quite so tightly structured (e.g. line-by-line word-cadence) as poetry, but it can still be pretty obvious whether a lyric is "good" or not.
Now in my case, I'm quite a bit older than almost everyone else who posts in this section regularly, but it's only been in the past several months that I've "grown up"to be something that may possibly resemble a respectable writer. And if I can make that claim at all, it is very much because I received exactly the right amount of critical and "warm-fuzzy" responses from a variety of people, over the past several months.
All of that is to say that I think almost any lyrics/poetry contributor would welcome any thoughtfully-considered opinion or recommendation![]()