"... what importance, if any, you all attach to a song corresponding with your own experience?"

Well, a universal song should mean something to anyone who hears it (assuming enough "universality" to things like language, shared experiences, etc.). So a song about an experience I've never had would have to have some "hook" into something I HAD experienced. Love songs don't mean so much to prepubescent children (though with today's pop culture, they have been exposed to a lot of sex/love/whatever ideas that "prepubescent" can be about five or six years old at times).

I've never been a cowboy, never roped a steer (sounds like the opening line of a song, doesn't it?), but I can still empathize with and appreciate the feelings of someone doing hard work in the great wide open. But if the song were about, let's say, translating medieval texts, the "message" wouldn't be about the translating, but about the work. I've done puzzles and solved problems, so that part of my life would resonate; knowing how to read fraktur or ancient Greek wouldn't in itself resonate.

What I think I'm trying to say is that the parts of a song that make it universalisible ("able to be universalized?" -- why not just "universal"?) can only be those that can be shared by others. The more common these elements are, the more universal the song. If I write a song about a beach cottage, I had better use descriptions that show the listener what I am seeing, so that someone who's never been to a beach cottage can get an idea of why a beach cottage is a nice place to be. If all I say is "I love this place," then the listener is allowed to think, "so what?"

I can think of lots of songs that have specifics of time, place, character, and action, but are at least somewhat universal. But the more specific the time/place/action, the less likely to be or become universal. What is so universal about an old Scottish border ballad? What is universal about "Robin Hood and the Peddlar?" "Barbara Allen?" "Four Maries?" (I've never committed infanticide, never waited on a queen, never faced the gallows -- but there's a core to that song and the others I mentioned that is "universalisible" in some ways. For my money, the Scottish border ballads are less universal than Robin Hood, mainly because I can understand resisting authority better than I can cattle-raiding among competing inbred clans.

So if you hear a song for the first time, and it has little in it that you can "relate" to, it's harder to like it (and, to my way of thinking, harder to learn). I play in a group that occasionally performs "To Anacreon in Heaven." I can play it all right, but I doubt I could easily memorize the lyrics. The classical references and in-jokes from the 18th century don't resonate with me, so I would, indeed, have trouble remembering the words. It's easier to remember the other words that Francis Scott Key wrote to the tune, and even then, the other verses (than the first) are harder to learn.

If you're a writer, keeping universality in mind is hard; a large number of the songer-singwriter crowd are not very good at it, I'm afraid. Too many times, the writer's feelings are expressed, but not the reason for those feelings, so it's hard for the listener to give a good God damn about the feelings, even if that same listener has those same feelings. Method actors recall things from their lives that made them happy, sad, angry, etc., to call up the emotion needed for a particular scene. If a song requires an emotion, it had better provide you with the image you can relate to in order to call up the proper emotion. Otherwise, it isn't universal enough to make the link. Just saying, "you should be sad because I am" doesn't work, but "for sale: baby shoes, never worn" (to quote the shortest novel ever written) evokes a whole raft of emotions because it is univeral.

I've blathered long enough, and probably haven't said anything I couldn't have said in four lines, in rhythm, with rhymes at the ends of lines two and four.

That's the way it goes,
My life, or the story of it.
When I express myself in words,
Nothing comes out but ...

Sweet violets.
Sweeter than the roses.
Covered all over from head to foot,
Covered all over in
Sweet violets.


Bob