Geez, "GUEST,`gargoyle", it sounds as if you're calling all the songwriters who ever wrote about someone else's experience "lyrical whores". For someone who claims to be concerned with focusing the Forum's thoughts on music, you've just made a quite thoughtless statement about that very music.

Get real! Would you have every song that wasn't written in the first person ("I did this, I did that") banished from the face of the earth? Of course, you'd also have to eliminate all songs WRITTEN in the first person that weren't REALLY the writer's personal anecdote (where the writer takes the voice of a character in the song's tale). Basically, you'd rip the guts out of the world's musical tradition, particularly the tradition of commemorating events and tragedies (for example, a shipwreck with all hands lost) in song.

I think it's a fine idea for Liz the Squeak to write a song about her experience. I think it's a rotten idea to compare her song-challenge to a solicitation for prostitution, and to imply that anyone who writes about something that didn't happen to him or her is a whore.

Here's an idea for you, Mr./Mrs./Ms. "SPEAK or SQUEAK": why don't YOU write a song about some experience of yours, and post it to the Forum? Why not be creative, instead of bashing a request for creativity and insulting other creative people???

Most sincerely,
SharonA