the thing about lyrics is that the only halfway objective way to assess "merit" in them is to have people listen to/read them. lyrics on their own often don't stand out terribly much without the music they're sung with. this is okay! great poetry often does not translate well to music, at least the sort of music that the average listener (in any group, nearly, not just pop fans) digs, and writing complete songs or lyrics FOR songs means that you have a lot of leeway as far as expressing the point of the lyrics WITHOUT being explicit within them. i find my lyrical style varying each time i write a new song (and i rarely put complete songs down these days, sadly), and the way i can tell whether a song is going to work for me or not is whether the song elicits in ME a strong memory/emotional association. not every song i write gives me goosebumps when i think of it, but a good portion do, and when you play something that is giving YOU goosebumps, there's a good chance that some of that is going to get across to the people who hear your songs.
