What George Burns said about "sincerity" in acting is probably true of songwriting as well. "If you can fake that you've got it made." Anyway that is the way I feel about songwriting most of the time. I know it is a craft that can be crafty. I think any good song will be sincere, but not necessarily because the writer was familiar with the subject or wrote about the things she knew the best; but more likely because the writer became familiar with the subject in the writing process and then mined the idea until it yielded the gold of authenticity.

I have always been fascinated with writers like Rogers and Hammerstein. Here are a couple of New Yorkers (I suppose) and the director comes to them and says, "Say fellows, I've got this great play called "Oklahoma" and I know you probably haven't been West of the Mississippi, but I would like you to write the music for it. So they read the script and a few days latter they say, "how about this little number right here where Curly walks through the corn" and they play "Oh what a beautiful Morning". They were never in Oklahoma. They have never been a farmer or a cowman. But they could write about it. Was the song sincere? Yes, it was perfectly sincere because they could not have written such a beautiful song without feeling it.

And that is the distinction I want to make. When we are talking about honesty in songs, I think we are talking about emotional honesty. And for me, if I don't get a little lump in my throat or a little tingle of insight about what I am writing; or if in the writing process I didn't have a sense of discovery or feel a sense of authenticity, then the song will never be convincing to me. Even then, it might be convincing to someone else and that is the wild card in music. Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary hated his little wedding song, "There is love" but it is played and loved every day I am sure.

So I am not in any way disagreeing with anything in the chapter. I just want to point out that familiarity is not requisite for song-writing and that emotional honesty is probably a better gauge of success in determining if a song is connecting to humankind; but there are even exceptions to that because there will always be that mysterious transfer of words and sounds from one heart to another and we are incapable of predicting how another heart will respond.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein