Write What You Know.

The songwriting cliche is 'Write what you know'. To help make a song ring true I certainly advocate this, but would extend it to 'Write what you know, but if you don't know your topic, make sure you know you don't know it (and perhaps even make it obvious)'.

This certainly goes for 'places' in songs too. I'm careful about referencing some place or other, even if I'm familiar with it. I had a somewhat ambiguous lyric happening a while ago where it was an apocalypse scenario with nuclear arms being floated into Long Beach etc. Haha. Talk about unwieldy. It had to go. For many reasons, not only would I need to be highly knowledgeable on the topic to make that one fly, but I'd also need to have a feel for whether those kinds of events could occur in that particular place. I have no clue.

Not to mention being concise which is also important. It doesn't always happen straight away though. The above-mentioned lumpy draft had enough ideas for four lyrics but I was gung-ho in my supposed ability to string 'em all together and make it work. Before long there were ufos on the scene as well, and all in a song that initially was about anger. How I got to all that other stuff I'll never know. I've done some doozies like that. You'd think I'd know better by now. The trick is in recognizing it and changing it.