I may post lyrics a bit later in a separate thread (with a link from this one.) I've tried it here before with no luck.

Capri, I agree with you about people maybe just not being able to find the words to explain things. The people I've asked have all been capable of communicating. You can even get something out of "it sucks" if you can ask further questions to will narrow down the possibilities. I usually don't ask those questions because I sense folks just don't want to talk about it when they give me a terse answer to begin with. I don't want people to do something they don't really want to do - I'd get answers designed to get me to leave them alone and get off the subject.

As far as not supplying a suggestion when commenting on suckage, I can usually come up with ideas if I understand WHY a person found something sucky. The suggestione are often inherent in the criticism. "You rhymed a word with the same durned word!" (Change one of the words or replace both.) "What the hell is 'discordancy' and what is it doing in this song?!" (Dump the word.) "I don't frikkin' understand what the blazes the frikkin' song's about!" (Re-write the frikkin' song or dump it.)

I've wished we've had "Song Challenges" that were serious in nature. The funny ones are great, but I've often seen serious, touching posts in threads - or entire threads - that inspired me more. Night Owl's 'Thank You' thread, the "Why We Sing" threads, are a couple of examples. Even if we did this, it would only provide practice in writing songs, not critique or guidance. There would be little interaction, just 'post and go'. A workshop sort of thing would be nice. Someone (???) could say "write a song on this topic." People would write songs, then the workshop 'someone' and the rest of us would discuss and critique the songs. I doubt it would work since there's some degree of organization involved. (insert winky-face here)