One of my pet peeves, coming from a singer/songwriter enthusiast background & now hanging out mostly in trad circles, is this idea that all navel gazing is bad.

To put in slightly different terms, what many of you have said, sometimes the extremely personal is universal, & sometimes the third person story is irrelevant. ie. introspection at it's best strikes a chord in many people, trad & story songs at their worst don't connect with many people.

I've come to 3 conclusions: 1) Some people prefer concrete stories, some people prefer introspective abstractions & feelings. 2) Trad songs get more respect, because the worst have been weeded out, so most of what has survived is either well crafted or says something many people can relate to or at least find interesting. 3) As someone above said, many naval gazing songs are more performance oriented & geared toward a unique singing style, so by their very nature, they will not be sung by many people & not be handed down in the oral tradition

I don't think whether a song is based on personal experience, history, or imagination is what makes the difference. All of the above can be done well or poorly, all of the above can resonate with people or turn them off. I liked both samples above. Not sure if they'll be around for a few hundred years, but there's a good chance they'll survive a few decades...