I think at least three of the previous posters mentioned spending months on a song before venturing into the world with it. I can resonate to that. I've been digesting Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out for about three months now.

But that sort of practice, while true, is not a response to this thread. After all, once you've "digested" a song, it's there forever (or should be). And unless you're a real beginner, there are lots of other songs built up in inventory.

Now I can see two, maybe several possibilities here: One, the singer doesn't have confidence in his/her command of the songs in inventory, even despite the months in process; two, there may be fear of performance, and the long time working on a song may be an avoidance mechanism, "putting off the evil day", so to speak.

I thought I had a third possibility, but it's gone from mind for the moment.

Dave Oesterreich