Two questions this time.

Firstly, LYRICS. I'm doing a 'popular song' for my GCSE Music integrated assignment and I need some help on lyrics. Writing them's easy, I just need to know WHAT to write about. I've followed my young and cool music teachers advice so far (Salinger, Kerouac, Pixies, Belle and Seb. for help), but I need an extra bit of input, and I know a lot of people here are in bands.

Secondly, I played Death Cab to my young and cool and usually very good tasted music teacher today. He said (the first 5 tracks of Trans...) it sounded like 'Semisonic' (shudder). He's wrong, isn't he? Help me convince him he's wrong.