I was reading about some serious local problem recently, and a community leader said "Talking about extremes kills useful debate." An excellent point!

The description above, "...seeing the top of someone's head as they fumbled through reading the words to sing a song that they didn't know well enough to be performing in public" is an extreme. How about the person who knows the song but gets flustered in public? How about the senior citizen who worries about looking like a fool? How about the person whose brain simply can't memorize?

How about being glad to hear a new song, even though it wasn't done smoothly?

I just did The Wabash Cannonball on the singaround. This song has a "chorus" whose fourth line is different every time, and sometimes there is no meaningful connection between that new line and the verse it's connected to. You bet I had a copy of it nearby.

Besides, when a person sings, you should be LISTENING, not staring at them as if they were on TV.

(I think that's nasty about Rise Up Singing.)