What makes a song great? Sometimes it's little touches that make a song " real", and lift it above the usual fayre. Take Steve Goodman's " Yellow Coat". The idea is an old one: for example, Willie Nelson's " Funny How Time Slips Away" and the ancient "standard "( 1930s?) What's New" tell the same story. A man ( or woman ) meets an old flame, and the listener hears one side of the conversation; now, in " Yellow Coat " the person doing the talking suddenly asks, " Did you ever get to buy that yellow coat?" That is a master's touch. It adds a terrific sense of "truth" to an already beautifully concieved song. Obviously, just around the time the couple split up the female half of the relationship had been admiring a yellow coat in a store window. This is a master songwriter at work. There are not many out there who could have written that song.