Of course my 'method' was meant to be facetious (although it's often close to what I'm thinking at singarounds these days!).

In my opinion Jim is absolutely right. It's these mawkish, "oh isn't anyone who's brave enough to sing wonderful!" and "no-one should be criticised - criticism is cruel and heartless" attitudes which mean that so many of our singarounds are dominated by talentless, boring, irritating, excruciatingly bad, lazy session-hoggers.

Good singers are skilled, and daring - they take risks. They are able to express the beauty of the songs and the emotions contained within them. If they are singing ballads (story songs) they know how to bring the narrative to life and to involve their audience in it. THESE are the things that we should be aiming for! THESE are the things that I want to experience in a session. What I most definitely don't want to hear is 'creepy Jack' mechanically and tunelessly droning through some bit of dogerrel in his greasy notebook for the umpteenth time!!

A few months ago a young woman turned up at the singaround that I attend. The first couple of times round she wasn't particularly good (good taste in songs though) but she got progressively better. One night she was asked to sing and she was electrifying! Suddenly, right in front of me, was raw talent! But she obviously works at her art. Just think how good she could be if exposed to sensitive, thoughtful, constructive criticism.