On a recent thread, a poster made the following statement...

"You don't have to believe everything you sing."

I thought this might be worthy of further discussion.

Although I don't believe that every song should be "meaningful" as such(After all there are lots of good nonsense songs)or necessarily always entirely represent your own sentiments i.e. some gospel songs may fall into this category and maybe love songs too, I wouldn't feel comfortable about singing a song where I was completely at odds with what was being expressed in the lyrics or something which I considered to be offensive.
If nothing else, I wouldn't be able to convince anyone else about the song if I couldn't convince myself.

However, I'm sure many of you might take a different view. After all, a singer might consider that he or she is similar to an actor and take on various roles, e.g. playing a "baddie" or somebody who is quite disagreeable. Many great actors relish such parts. Yet, in real life,they are "pussy cats" who wouldn't say "boo to a goose".
So, they would consider that their job is to "interpret" the song.

Of course, this already happens in musicals, opera and so on but, arguably, this is part and parcel of the acting role. Should a different criteria apply if these songs are taken out of context and performed elsewhere?
Another good example would be singing ballads where the performer is taking on the role of a narrator.

As I say, I don't expect every singer to have "lived" a particular song or to be 100% committed to every lyric and many songs are fairly harmless. However, I'd suggest that is is much harder to sing a song with real conviction if you don't personally believe in its contents...at least it is for an *amateur* such as myself. It may be easier for professional and more experienced performers?

There was a recent instance at my local singing group where I refused to sing a particular song which "bashed" and severely scolded church goers and lectured them that they had to be "born again" before they could be Christians.
Although I knew this might upset church people for whom we would be performing later, my main reason for disliking the song was that I(personally) wasn't particularly religious and didn't want to be lecturing others on how to live their lives or to shove a particular point of view down their throat especially when I didn't believe it myself. Thankfully, a few others in the group agreed with me and the tutor had to, reluctantly, back down.

I'm sure many of you will be able to give examples of subjects which you might refuse to sing about. I'd imagine that racist, sexist, and bigoted material in general would be a "No.. no" for most of us but some might wish to argue that even some of these songs are are OK as long as we can somehow "detach ourselves" from them?
What do you think?