It’s hard to write a great love song. Yes, it’s hard because you need to access intense emotions. But what’s really tricky is taking those emotions and presenting them in a novel way, a way that hasn’t already been done by Stevie Wonder or Carole King or Dolly Parton or the Beatles.

“When you’re trying to write pop love songs for so many years, you say to yourself, ‘I have hit them from every angle, is there a next angle?,’ ” Lake Street Dive drummer Mike Calabrese told the Herald from his home in Vermont.

The answer is yes.

Calabrese found that fresh angle with “Seats at the Bar” off Lake Street Dive’s new album “Good Together.” The tune is a gentle gem about skipping the two-top and eating dinner at the bar (ex-local Calabrese had South End spot SRV or the now-closed Eastern Standard in mind). It’s also a song that draws its welcome tenderness and intimacy from its specificity — “Knee to knee, heart to heart/Bittersweet in mason jars/In our seats at the bar.”

“It’s a love letter to my wife,” Calabrese said ahead of his band’s two-night stand at MGM Music Hall on Dec. 13 and 14. “That’s why it’s so specific.”

The members of Lake Street Dive have been writing specific, distinctive, and nuanced pop for two decades. Born out of the New England Conservatory and the Cambridge Americana scene, original members Calabrese, singer Rachael Price, and bassist Bridget Kearney have become diligent craftspeople.

“Pop music, popular music, populism, you think it has to be limited because it has to be accepted by the most amount of people at once,” Calabrese said. “That part is simple. That’s why there isn’t a toddler that doesn’t know what ‘Baby Shark’ is. But it’s OK to expand your ears or your mind or your lyrics and still include those (simple hooks).”

So many of Lake Street Dive’s songs sound classic and could only come from the members’ muses — yes “Seats at the Bar,” but also “Twenty-Five,” “Bobby Tanqueray,” and “Baby Don’t Leave Me Alone.”

Other songs just sound classic, evoking a “Is this an ’80s cover?” or “Is this an old Motown song?” feeling before you realize it’s an original.

Despite the fact that Calabrese, Price, and Kearney all write songs, 2017 addition keyboardist/singer Akie Bermiss now adds a handful of songs to the mix each album. Next, the band might get some writing help from guitarist James Cornelison, who joined in 2021.

“Rarely are people pushing too hard to get their songs chosen for an album,” Calabrese said of the chemistry in the band. “You bring something in and if nobody is really jumping at it, you accept it. If a song is not working for somebody, there is heavy veto power.”

“Unless you are Bridget, then every song that you bring in is good,” Calabrese added. (He’s not wrong.)

It’s been a long journey from tiny Cambridge club the Lizard Lounge to the 5,000-seat MGM Music Hall (and to the band’s first Grammy nomination for “Good Together” for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album). But Calabrese loves the band’s measured, thoughtful growth.

“We move slowly. We are like a barge,” he said with a laugh. “But everything has been intentional and deliberate, and we take luck when we get it.”

Luck is great. Thankfully, you don’t have to rely too much on it when you write songs like “Seats at the Bar.”

For tickets and details, visit lakestreetdive.com