I think there is such a valid concept as "serious music," meaning that if you don't take it seriously, you don't get it all.

That seems like one of the differences in expectations of "serious" and "popular" music that you can actually depend on the liner notes to explain yourself? Yeah. Whereas in popular music you depend on photo shoots. A hardcore band who looked like Duran Duran would have to depend upon those liner notes.

There's already a great deal to do writing the songs. And if I were completely in control of it, nobody would be able to say "this song doesn't work."

My mother says I have boring percussion.

My mother was into folk-rock when I was little, so I think of folk-rock as the norm from which everything else deviates. Of course, that's completely preposterous, but that's how I grew up. What is the norm by which to judge wordiness? I think I'm less wordy than Madonna.

The adventure is when people don't know what they're doing at all. Like, I think that the first pop band to use synthesizers as their main instrument and take it seriously was probably Silver Apples. And they sure didn't know what they were doing, and they sure don't sound like anything else.

Surf is that music which is entirely about evoking something. There's never any vocals, so it's not about the lyrics, it's about the reverb.