Personally I think it's more like Billy used to write introspectively, almost like the band was creating their own world and the fans enjoyed what they found there. When Machina rolled around it was more like Billy was looking outward and trying too hard to reach out and make some connection - so you had stuff like the Machina concept ('there's like this band, and the fans are involved in the story...') and the self-conscious political references in Zeitgeist. It's as though Billy made a decision to reinvent himself in a way, do things differently, and it just didn't work as well as before. Maybe that happened musically too, because his writing style changed and not entirely in a good way
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