Click here for a start, Seany!

I'd sit on the fence between Dave and Wolfgang on this one. Certainly it often helps to understand a song if you want to deliver it convincingly - God knows I've heard more than enough cases of people singing Irish songs in ways that did no justice to the song, through apparent lack of understanding. On the other hand - its a two-way process. As you sing it and tease it out, you learn more about it. If the "analysis" becomes an end in itself, it kills the song just as efficiently as ignorance.

Regards

p.s. There are also, of course, some songs we sing just because we don't really understand them - we just try to preserve the mystery.