If the songs were in lumps, then you would expect to understand what was going on in the plot. Which is not a realistic goal. And also the instrumentation is different for every show, so it's more varied sonically. And people are free to make up their own plots, of course. There are pretty dense and complicated plots, and they're simple songs.

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.

My mother says I have boring percussion.

Yeah, except that when I write pop songs I have pretty strict constraints that I impose on myself. 69 Love Songs is a constraint. That the titles have to begin with "I'"s is a relatively strict constraint. Charm of the Highway Strip is all travel songs. And I am free to change the plot slightly to accommodate something that happens to rhyme conveniently.

Well, things hold up even if they sound dated. It can be very difficult to listen to 80s pop songs with really, really gigantic smashed drum sounds. You just want to turn that gated reverb down on the snare. It sounds wrong now. It sounds amateurish. And ugly. But at the time it sounded state-of-the-art. So yeah, I think it's important not to sound state-of-the-art in a way that anybody else is going to sound. Or you'll quickly sound like yesterday's state-of-the-art.

I don't remember things initially when listening to music. Like, I don't remember where I first heard a song, I don't have nostalgic attachment to a song in that it reminds me of such and such a time or place. I think I probably did experience that somewhat when I was not a full-time, professional musician, but I don't think music works that way for people who are in it constantly.

If the songs were in lumps, then you would expect to understand what was going on in the plot. Which is not a realistic goal. And also the instrumentation is different for every show, so it's more varied sonically. And people are free to make up their own plots, of course. There are pretty dense and complicated plots, and they're simple songs.