Half time...

Ok, so some people use singer-songwriter as a value neutral term to describe anyone in any genre of music who has ever sung a song they wrote themselves, ever.

Some people use it to describe a specific genre of music that either came into being in the 1970s or the 1990s, depending on who's doing the telling, that tends to the introspective.

Clearly it can't be both.

The first is so broad as to be entirely meaningless, in that it covers every song ever sung unless done as a cover or unless the identity of the author is lost. The second, the one I always understood it to mean, offends all those who consider themselves to be singer songwriters but who don't consider themselves to be sensitive or introspective (a new genre of crass, insensitive singer songwriters maybe? Joking. Joking!).

If I can briefly reprise my mild spat with Jeri, above (who I'm sure is far more charming than his/her posts make him/her sound!), when I was referring to the UK music press, I was talking about the mysterious obsession and reverence they generally have for the singer songwriter genre (in this case), rather than referring to the one magazine that generally doesn't cover singer songwriters (definition two) as they are outside its stated musical remit. Still didn't stop them recently putting Devon Sproule on the cover though, thus reminding us that breaking your own rules in a good cause is perfectly okay.

Not that it really matters. It's only music. The soundtrack to life rather than life itself.