Of course, it's all pretty subjective.
+1
Also don't forget Uriah Heep and Talking Heads were both decades ago.. do you guys really think you could overcome your temporal biases to know how those lyrics sounded at that time? Because I don't know if I could.
+2
You know, I've gone back and forth on the whole hey-day-may-say-way thing, and the way I think about it now is that I want to write words that kind of glide by, not too many barbs that stick out. The listener is free to pick up on them, and they hopefully don't suck, but they also don't take the listener hostage by being too "important sounding" or unconventional. I kinda like words to have a flow and not sound too forced. Kinda like all that math-rock that's a bunch of changes and unconventional time sigs thrown together...not seeing the forest for the trees, thinking it'll make a song "interesting" when there's really not much song there. But my tastes have been changing toward more trad sounding stuff in recent years, so you get my biased opinion there.
+3
Also too many people confuse poetry and song lyrics which, I think, are completely different. Song lyrics are not meant to sustain the weight of poetry and often suffer from clunky attempts.
+4
I spend a lot of time on lyrics...not because I'm trying to write "deep/important" kind of stuff....rather just trying to say stuff that's probably been said a million times in a million songs, and not have it sound too cliché.
You can't dismiss simple, basic lyrics that use every-day language and phrases....the same stuff that's been used a million times.
It's about *songs*, the lyrics simply need to fit the song and work with the overall vibe....they don't need to be uber-creative to hit home with people and be entertaining and therefor help make the song a good song.
If you just want to impress with the lyrics, and you don't much care if there's not a lot of people who "get" them or can connect with them....that's fine....but if you want to write stuff for general consumption, it has to be accessible, it has to mean something to a lot of people, and just not you and a small niche crowd, unless that's all you care about.
This discussion reminds of something I recently read in one of the trade rags (I get a few, so not sure if it was Mix or Tape Op, or Electronic Musician, etc).
Anyway, there was some article, and if I recall, it was Nile Rogers talking about how one time when he was ragging on and on about the "quality" of the music out there, and the "silly" songs that were getting all the radio time, etc, etc...another music industry pro (can't recall who it was) said to Nile Rogers (paraphrasing here
)...."WTF do you think you are to judge some song as crap when millions of people are liking it?"...and Nile went on to say in the article how that hit home and he realized how right this other guy was.
So point being, as was said earlier.....it's all subjective.
Getting back to Uriah Heep days in the early '70s....we didn't memorize and sing all those weird lyrics, and read all kinds of "messages" in them. Heck, most of the time you kinda' heard one or two lines that stuck in your head, and the rest was more of an overall listening experience of the the whole song. No one at the time was thinking
"Wow, what deep lyrics". 
Like the song "July Morning", which I always liked....all I can remember is the opening line....
"There I was on a July morning, looking for love," ...if I heard the song, I might recall some of the other lines, but mostly it was about the transition from the vocal portion of that song to the second half that turns into a jam on organ and guitar...etc. That's what made it a good song to me....not the "deep" lyrics.
By the way...I always thought that GNR took the the "July Morning" motif/structure and used it for their song, "November Rain" (another song with not so special lyrics, but one of their most played songs).
