There are also folks who, even with the use of cheat sheets, etc., have issues with tracking. They cannot look away from their sheets for even a moment for fear of completely losing their place.


I've known singers like that - the kind of person who sings to the bottom of the page then pauses to turn the page before carrying on, wherever they happen to be up to:

Thousands or more!
Thousands or more!
Thousands

[pause, rustle]

or more!

With the greatest respect to those people, that's not a difference of ability, it's a problem - and it's a problem that's fostered by depending on lyric sheets in the first place.

No amount of persuasion can convince some people that an audience or even a song circle might be forgiving of an error or two.

They'll have realised it by their second visit. Hopefully by their third they'll have noticed that most people aren't singing from song sheets.

So if you are saying that there is no place in sessions or song circles for "crutches" then you are denying a good many people, who may have some wonderful music to share, the opportunity to do so.

I think you're confusing two very different things. If you've given 'hundreds of hours' to a song, you will know that song inside out - you'll know what makes it tick. If the words or the chords fly away when you come to perform it, you need a crib to glance at, and I don't think there's any shame in that. But someone who sings while reading a song line by line, chord by chord - just as they would if they were sight-reading - doesn't know their songs inside out, and on the whole I'd rather listen to someone who does. (To be fair, there are some very, very good sight-readers - people who can manage the expression and the eye-contact and everything - but people don't tend to complain about them.)