47 responses and counting, great discussion guys. I know that we don't like to be lectured (and some may baulk if they infer a commercial motive behind the original post) but actually I think the three main takeaways from it make total sense: (i) don't overcomplicate; (ii) use variation to get and keep attention; and (iii) know when to stop tinkering.
I don't think that these are particularly genre specific. In a 3 - 4 minute artform anything we add (melody, lyric, instrumentation, space) should be there for a reason, and a sanity check is always good. That doesn't always mean dumbing down. If we are writing for a specific genre then that will always have its own challenges and, probably yes, rules. If we just want to write the best songs that we can write and effectively transmit what we want to say, then I'd say these thought processes still apply (even if we reject them, considering them will generally be a "Good Thing").
I think that those of us who grew up before the millennium are certainly lucky - looking at the top 40s from those days we were served a radio diet of everything from Queen to Bowie to Joy Division to Nirvana, Punk, Ska, Disco, funk, rap, electro, rock, comedy, wierdness, kitch, ballads, soul, folk, pretty much anything, which consciously or unconsciously we can use to our advantage and flavours what we produce. Today, even though everything is just a mouseclick away, you have to somehow find out that it exists and go and find it, as it's not in the charts.
