If it's all right, I think I'll deal with the issue at hand. Not where it went. Thanks for posting this, as I hadn't read the original thread. Just like you can play all the notes of a song and never get the song, you can sing all the correct words to a song, and never get the feel or the heart of it. Until you completely internalize a song and make it yours, it's just words or notes. I sing in a Men's Gospel Chorus and we learn everything by heart.. our harmony lines and the words. Even before we start to learn a new song, we go through the words and speak them. I think that's a great approach to a song... speaking the words, rolling them around on your tongue and in your mind before you even sing them. It's all part of the process of making the song your own. Just my opinion.

Now, I've seen the opposite approach to music. I've met people who play piano and when I ask them to play something for me they say, "I ca'tl, I don't have any sheet music." At first, I used to be astonished when I heard that response and I ask them, "You mean you can't play the piano unless you have sheet music to tell you what to play?" And they say, "yes, I can't." There are people who are so used to reading music and words that they are helpless without them. I asked a couple of good singers if they could do a bass harmony on a couple of songs I was recording, and they said that they couldn't do it unless they had sheet music. I told them that I could record the bass harmony on a separate channel, so they could learn it by ear, but they said that they couldn't do it. Amazing, to me.

I agree... learn the words and live with them. Understand what you're singing and feel it. Then you can sing it for others, and they will hear the song with all the meaning that you put into it.

Jerry