Songwriting is an artform, but there is a misconception that pop music is more often than not vapid and thoughtless, lyrically simple and repetitive with a shallow message that really doesn't matter as long as its catchy. While this perspective isn't completely unfounded, I believe that it can be so much more, and when it is done right it takes pop music to an entirely different level that has always fascinated me. I love beautiful melodies telling me terrible things, aching confessions set to 140 BPM with a bassline that will rattle the windows in your car so hard that people can hear it two stoplights away. When you can deliver a message that is raw and honest or tell a story that leaves your audience shaking once they realize the true depth of it with that hypnotic infectiousness that pop music is known for, it transcends pop and becomes art. The trick is to take something that destroys you, something that you need to get off your chest and stop running from it. Instead you have to wallow in it, study it, examine it with a rose colored lens that allows you to find the beauty in it, becuase there is beauty in absolutely everything if you look hard enough. And when you can find a way to confess it to the world in a poetic way that moves your audience, both physically and emotionally, then you have taken that trauma and transformed it into art. And if that suffering has allowed you to create something beautiful, then at least you didn't suffer in vain. And once you can achieve that it doesn't hurt anymore, not like it used to, because you have redeemed it for something greater and you're almost grateful for having gone through it and lived to tell the tale. One of the best examples of this I have ever came across is "Monster" by Lady Gaga. If you haven't heard it I would encourage you to find it (right there in the previous sentence) and listen to it, because it has a double meaning hidden in its lyrics that is so obvious once you know its there but its concealed so well beneath the ultrapolished, glittering facade of dance pop that most would never even know its there.