Doesn't only apply to songs. I don't expect that The Death Of Nelson or The Execution Of Lady Jane Grey actually looked much like the famous paintings purporting to represent them; did the battle of Borodino actually follow the process watched from the hilltop in War & Peace by Pierre Bezukhov?

I'll give you a for·example from my own experience: the film Dance With A Stranger, about Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England. I happened to know her slightly. Even better, I knew her victim, her lover David Blakeley, a racing driver who was a regular customer at my mother's restaurant in S Kensington, with whom I would always share a drink & a chat when he came ~~ usually alone, as Ruth worked as a nightclub hostess so couldn't generally come out evenings, tho he did bring her occasionally which is how I met her [she once politely admired my singing, BTW; but that is another story]. My main point is that the saturnine, filthy-tempered, abusive representation of Blakeley in the film, in an excellent-in-its-way performance by Rupert Everett, bore not the least resemblance to the charming, affable, companionable young man with whom I spent so many sociable half-hours all those years ago.

Myth? Or did Shelagh Delaney, who wrote the script but never met him, but doubtless consulted others who did, actually know more about him than did I, who had frequently met him but only on these restaurant-based public social occasions?

Who to say?

~Michael~