Celebrate what makes a good song? What skills / techniques?

Listening to the joy in the voices of a song in a language foreign to me, that still gave me goosebumps and shivers of pleasure, inspired me to start this thread.

        First I thought we could discuss songwriting skills together
and when we have some consensus, then write a communal song together with a set theme  So please post your ideas on song writing and your suggestions for a theme to progress.

Re: Celebrate what makes a good song? What skills / techniques?

As I understand it, the group Zap Mama often make up songs collectively by a  traditional process that is like a game in which each person improvises a part of a word/rhythym/melody and then passes it off to another to finish their musical/lyrical sentence. might be difficult for us with out hearing each other. Maybe there is a beautiful song in a foreign language that we could learn the melody for and then make up lyrics using using that kind of  “Renga-esque” method of one person starting with a verse or part of a verse and with the next person adding what the feel…

maybe a short melody like Durufles Ubi Caritas:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYkXnw-NDVY might be good to start with. I have also been trying (on and off) to write english words to these two brazilain  songs which I can play on guitar and want to be able to sing equally beautiful english lyrics to :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tmRem9WNMg&feature=related, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iqgG56D1uU and could use some help.

these are just some ideas…

I am not sure I have much of a theory about what makes a good song that is different from what makes a good anything else…I'll think about it some more and see what I come up with,

I-P