It's almost spooky reading your posts because you tend to say things I've always felt but didn't know how to phrase it. Like this:
"HDH I find especially interesting...making songs that were fun to sing, easy to pick up, but are able to imbue deeply complex metaphors and heartbreaking/complicated subject matter by making the verses almost have a nursery rhyme structure to them. It's a wonderful fusion of really complex subject matter with song and verse structure that is truly elegant in its simplicity."
I just could never say it that well and I didn't think anyone else would have understood what I was getting at. Yes, H-D-H had this way of saying very deep things with very simple words. And just like you, I got into songwriting because of H-D-H and Smokey Robinson [[and also James Dean and William Weatherspoon.) Oddly, I found that I could approximate something that was like a poor man's version of a Smokey lyric much easier than an H-D-H lyric. That isn't to say that a Smokey Robinson-esque song is easy to write, NOT BY A LONGSHOT! The thing is, Smokey's songs appealed to my love of language and the power of using precisely the right words at the right time. As he said, everything has been pretty much said before, so the trick is to find new and clever ways of phrasing thoughts. I've always loved word play and how powerful the use of words can be so I think find a Smokey lyric was always much closer to my heart to begin with.
On the other hand, an H-D-H lyric is deceptive. It's as you say, they almost come across as nursery rhymes. No fancy frills or puns or word play. Just straight forward and to the point. But I don't think anyone has ever expressed such complex concepts and emotions with such straightforward language like H-D-H. On paper, the words may not amaze or impress, but when sung, suddenly you're hit all over the head with the full emotional impact of those simple words. Try as I might, I can't come up with lyrics as compact and direct as H-D-H. Nobody else really has to my mind; maybe the ones who came closest were James Dean and William Weatherspoon, but they had something altogether unique in their lyrics too. They wrote lyrics that sounded as if they could have been written by the gods of Greek mythology.
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