Hey Arty, good to hear from you, thanks for the question.
It came up for me last year when I was writing with a guy from Cairn Australia. He wanted to write a song FOR that area, sort of an "Anthem" for his neck of the woods. In that, we needed to use exact details about his country. If I didn't have someone who was intimately involved with that part of the world, I wouldn't have tried it.
"MADE IN AUSTRALIA"
MAB/Andrew Cavanah
You're the stockman riding, on that endless fence line
Baking in the sun out for months at a time
The Surf life savers out on Bond-eye beach
Sydney harbour bridge, and the barrier reef
You're the pilot Doctor, setting it down
Landing on the highway in an outback town
Chorus
MADE (MADE) MADE IN AUSTRALIA
MADE (MADE) MADE IN AUSTRALIA
MADE (MADE) MADE IN AUSTRALIA
Notes:
Now the same lyrics could apply for an American landscape, but we would say "Cowboy" instead of "Stockman" and of course our beaches would be different, probably wouldn't say "Surf." But much would apply.
Since we were doing it primarily for an Aussie audience, the music is pretty much straight AC/DC, one of the biggest groups out of Australia. Where he is, he gets access to a lot of bar bands who play AC/DC stuff, so it fits a format in his area. That might not be so much here in my neck of the woods.
In my opinion and experience, you can use colloquialisms, "Colorado hit" in small doses as long as you explain everything as you go. All these lyrics would not have worked if the chorus didn't sum up what it was. It is all "MADE IN AUSTRALIA." So the details are explained along the way.
In the Blake Shelton song, "What I came here to forget" all of the things he is doing in that song, drinking with a hot girl in a bar, gearing up for a hot night, getting even, etc, is all about remembering what they did, and now it is about doing things to try to forget that. So having those little "elbow moments" which are phrases and terms that you might have to listen to two or three times to understand, are what makes the memorability factor of the song.
MAB
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