The reason they call it bubblegum music -- sweet for a few seconds then you've got a tasteless lump of mastic or chicle to exercise on. And thank the trees and the dust for both, I love gum. I share James's magnetic pull toward the wading pool of fun pops -- those electric colors. No good trying to substitute 100 (or even 10) % juice -- it's got to be sugar straight, by which I mean corn syrup, and a little color, a little perfume.

It's a very alienating, hating discussion, actually, this music and lyrics blah blah. So what most of the words out there are weak; so are the melodies, performances, and production, if you want to look at it that way. The words get held to a standard the rest does not -- because everyone knows that words are a bluff, whereas to make music takes practice, coordination, I'm laughing even putting this list of imagined special habits of musical performers together.

Everybody who's any good at any of this cultural production works at it. Ruminating counts. What's the gym ad say, look around, everybody needs something? There are no absolute categories of desirable lyric experience, and we all have a three-to-six second rule, after which the new song on either has us or it doesn't, in which case it's back to chatting. Which is about sound, instrumentation (the hell was that?), or dynamics, usually, not even melody. With poems, if you start with the word I you are basically putting on a clown suit, which is great for birthday parties and other ongoing projects...

All right, I've got a game of Candyland to play.