Star power matters. A big star can have people loving something that is lifelessly formulamaic.
An obscure person could likely not sell Stairway to Heaven.

imho, as a casual and un-credentialed observer..."great" songs garner widespread acclaim and make money. Like "great" generals and politicians. they may be truly excellent in several ways or mostly lucky. Ultimately, for whatever reason...they sold and became a piece of the culture....hence achieved GREATNESS.

As for songsites...most of the people who post (including me) are not very good musicians, vocalists etc. ESSENTIALLY, we submit partially sung poems with a guitar strumming roughly in the background (or something else) and tell each other how we would have written the poem versus how the song poster wrote it. ...and /or recite something from a Jason Blum book.

A harsh view...we are painstakingly dressing our daughter for a grand gala-ball, but in most cases, she is not actually very pretty and not actually going to the ball. But we often argue about whether or not she is.

(side note...for a song to be "pretty" it has to sound good. There are exceptions to every rule ,TVZ, Dylan and the like...but that is the rule.)

Having said that...if you love to endeavor to write songs because it brings you pleasure...you are in a good place to do it.


The opinions of this author...are just that.

https://soundcloud.com/sunset-poet-of-texas