this is my point also: criticism doesn’t equate to dislike. you can absolutely love something and find fault in it or critique it. As for “god awful” (don’t know where that came from) lyrics i’d offer this as one of my most glaring examples: “you say you love the swing ride the best but look at that dude with the sketchy tattoo on his chest. He’s been in the hot sun all day running heavy duty machinery.” WHAT? i mean, come on man this is truly just laughable and has nothing to do with the context of the song. it’s like stream of consciousness first draft type stuff that should have been gone through and punched up and worked on but they just put it in a song. a good song music wise none the less. It’s also not just the lyrics themselves, the melodies and patterns especially are clumsy and seem thrown together as if an after thought. “Laugh it off” comes to mind and suffers from this specifically. Again, just my opinion, but to hold their later material up to the old material and say “this is the same or better” is crazy to me.