Several are sturdy critiques written from a conservative perspective.
Though he rarely works with much beyond piano, he writes sturdy melodies and arrangements, solid enough to carry his bleak lyrics, doled out frugally.
"This Is Acting" is the Platonic ideal of a modern pop album: like Adele, Sia writes sturdy, direct songs whose power derives from force rather than from flourish.
Most of the literature in Hindi is religious in inspiration; in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the reform-minded Kabīr, for example, wrote sturdy short poems in which he sought to reconcile Islām and Hinduism.
Off in a corner, near some Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt books, is a selection of sturdy-looking Shinola writing journals, and sprinkled throughout the store are Shinola's leather products: MacBook sleeves, totes, purses, etc., each branded with a unique serial number, even the small items, which is aesthetically jarring.
His serrated tantrums and menacing ballads inspired some of the 1990's best-selling acts, from Marilyn Manson to Korn, and if Nine Inch Nails has outlasted nearly all of them, that's in large part because Mr. Reznor's rather risible lyrical preoccupations (insects, rotting stuff, things eating other things) don't prevent him from writing big, sturdy songs with big sturdy hooks.
Pears's writing is sturdy, sometimes pedestrian; all his characters sound like the narrator, and like one another.
"It was made of sturdier material!" he writes.
Starting out to write sturdier songs at the time of the Platters, Drifters and Bobby Vee, she naively tries bogus tempos, pedestrian beats and missing harmonies until she meets and marries slick, sexy Elvis clone Gerry Goffin, compromising her career with an unfaithful husband and a needy child.
The writing is usually sturdy, and in a middle section that relates a long death march through the south it even rises to an urgency that recalls Jerzy Kozinski's novel "The Painted Bird".
