^ SEASONS.
The only one I can't think of is the fourth example......
Anywho. There are A LOT of Japanese songs that deal with "deep" and "poetic" lyrics, but who cares? I'd much rather listen to 100 songs talking about the wind or the pain of a lost love, rather than 100 songs that talk about booty shaking or.....well, literally nothing, lol.
No, lyrics aren't everything, but they certainly add a lot. For me, if the singer sucks or the lyrics are terrible, the song had better be really ****ing amazing, hah.
The problem with American music is, usually the singer is average at best, the song has extremely *****y lyrics, AND the music is typical and generic; to make matters worse for me (but not for everyone), they rarely use a type or genre that I like enough to ignore all that other stuff. Of course, I do agree with those of you saying that J-Pop isn't much better these days, but at least they still have the good lyrics most of the time, and, in my opinion, they usually sing better (a lot of American artists hardly even sing - it's much closer to rapping D: ).
Having said all that, I would just like to go even more off topic [lol] and share my concern for music these days, as a whole...... Most of it sucks, be it in the U.S. or Japan or Europe or Australia or wherever. And this makes me very, very sad.
We've really hit a rough patch in creativity, for all of the entertainment industry, actually. >.<