So it seems like the solo singer-songwriter style is more popular than it has been for about 3 decades. How odd. The main thing that I wonder is not why this is so, so much as why do people choose to adopt it ? I'll admit that when I first started playing the guitar I was emulating fairly obvious idols- Neil Young, Nick Drake, Van Morrison. But you quickly realise it's a very generic and very over-suscribed genre. You see the same stereotypes at every gig/open mic- willowy hippychick cooing nothing much at all; wounded bloke extracting revenge in song; babyboomer who's just recently found time to reconnect with his/her younger self. I suppose even if they're not old enough to really remember it, they still have that general revulsion towards the tawdry, overproduced sound of the 80s. If they're not too old they'll be tired of dance music's domination- if they're older then they've probably always hated it. Certainly sampler or sequencer-based music can't claim precedence anymore just due to being innovative. It's part of the furniture and has ceased to progress fundamentally, plus people like Beck crossed it with "real" music so effectively that the battle-lines aren't as stark as they were. So what can a poor boy do to differentiate himself from the rest ? 1- Spare us the angst, go out and live a bit, 2- Try to write about other people than yrself, 3- Think about why you've chosen to write and play your own songs, rather than just sing someone else's. I recently asked a girl at an open mic what kind of songs she wanted to write- she looked at me like I'd asked her for the code to the human genome. Why bother if you've got no fucking idea why ?