Writing lyrics is a unique experience in the sense that it alleviates much of the worries and pressures that I put on myself when I write philosophy or fiction.
The song is a time capsule, free from the constraints of wide-spread comprehension; it speaks of earnest emotion and reaction to the time and place that conceived it—and it in no way needs to ever be anything more than that.
Metaphors and descriptors can also be used somewhat selfishly when writing lyrics; it's not necessary for the audience to fully understand what is being said in the same way that the writer understands his/her words. Lyrics tend to invite the listener to take the lyrics and assign their own interpretations and meanings to them—the song is there to be adopted by the audience and to be made their own; a universal, or congruous, understanding of its message is wholly unnecessary.
That's what is so uniquely powerful and wondrous about an impactful song—it, in a sense, belongs singularly to all of its listeners. Each mind that takes the song in, that absorbs it, and allows itself to be in some way moved by it, is taking a unique ownership of the song by interpreting it in a way that only that individual mind could interpret it.
The song belongs to everyone.
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