Many if not most songs start with the writer having a strong emotional connection to the idea(s) in it but… I think it’s good to remember that the song itself is very different from our emotional attachment to it… though sometimes the two can feel very much the same.

It’s natural to love our original ideas about our songs; that’s a big part of what makes us want to write them.  If we don’t start with that attachment, we often develop it.  We love the title, a lyric, a certain movement in the melody, a chord progression, etc.

But at some point, particularly if it’s getting any good… a song takes on a life of its own.  That particularly incisive line that you love, in the second Verse?  The song may not need it anymore.   That chord turnaround into the Chorus?  Maybe, if we really pay attention, it unbalances the truer emotion, the ‘feeling’, of the Chorus.

We pour our emotion into our songs.  That’s as it should be, as it must be.  But there comes a time to step back, to let go… To hear the song whole, not as parts that we love… and be willing to let go of what’s not serving the song anymore…. much as we may like or love it.

Of course this isn’t an absolute.  Everyone, I think, sometimes (often?) leaves stuff in a song that arguably doesn’t need to be there, just because they love it or feel it’s important in some way – if not to the song, then to them.  And, after all, it’s your song.  And sometimes the song works great anyway.  Beautiful things don’t always fit together ‘perfectly’ – whatever that is.

But I’d say it’s critical to have the discipline to identify when something you love is no longer helping the song and to be willing to sacrifice it for a larger objective.  It’s not easy.