kat, I agree that good musicians can have their heads buried in sheet music and keep perfect time. With the motley crowds that often assemble at sing-arounds, though, I find a lot of folks can't/don't.

Yeah, Micca, rembemering lyrics to your own songs tends to be the hardest, precisely because you've probably gone through so many revisions en route to the final version that there's a lot of interference going on!

Abuwood, to say that to share a song you "have to look at" the other folks is too categorical. [Ask Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Andrea Bocelli...] It's not so much where your eyes are as where your attention is.