Songwriting is a funny thing.  Most of my original songs deal with stories or issues that are important to me, and that can sometimes make performing them challenging.  It can mean putting some of my truest thoughts out there, ones that I might not normally tell strangers in casual conversation.  Imagine how vulnerable a performer can feel when she's doing that! I was working with an accompanist last night, rehearsing for a gig coming up in a few weeks.  We have plans to continue building our repertoire together so that we'll able to play more together down the road.  Since we were sharing tunes, I played her one of my original songs, a jazzy little ballad called If You Have a Secret. Here's the second verse to give you a sampling:

If you have a secret Sweetheart won't you say? For I will never speak it Or give the game away. My lips are ever sealed, Except when I'm with you. Honey, you will never guess That I've a secret, too.

When I wrote this tune, I was deliberately trying to write a jazz tune, and the lyric started from the seed of an idea about being willing to listen to someone's secrets.  I wasn't particularly concerned about the message of the song, or the philosophical issues surrounding the telling and keeping of secrets.  I just wanted to try my hand at writing a jazz song.  As a consequence, I focussed on the meter and the rhyme, on the keeping of the theme, and on keeping things playful.  I didn't think of the lyrics as particularly profound.  Not all songs have to be profound, after all. Interestingly, though, when I played this song for my friend, she really honed in on the lyrics and wanted to know all about my thought processes and how the words came to be.  Now when I read them over, I can see that I really could have been writing the words as a secret love message to someone.  But I hadn't thought of them that way before. You just never know, when you're performing, what people will latch onto and attach meaning to.  And that's a wonderful thing.  A truly wonderful thing. Of course, that can add to the vulnerability of the performer.  For example, one of my songs relates to the long-ago breakup of a friend of mine.  Since it's written in the first person, though, it is inevitable that some people will wonder if the lyrics are about me, and whether I'm having problems in my marriage.  (I'm not, but thanks for asking!) There's the adage given to writers to "write what you know".  That doesn't necessarily mean you have to know about it through personal experience.  The more I perform, the more I feel that sincerity is the key.  When I perform a song, whether I wrote it or not, I sing it as if I mean it... and I do.  I really mean it. When the lyric resonates with a person's experience, the sincerity of that idea is what hooks them.  I hope that every time I perform, there's at least one song that "hooks" each person who is listening.  Because I believe it's that connection that gives the music soul. All this might mean that you interpret the lyrics of a song to have a meaning completely different from what I intended them to be. But that's okay, because — truly — there is no right answer.