Submitted by John Millus, Jan 5, 2007 11:39

Great article. I write songs, "living room hits" some call them. I know that Mr. McWhorter never sat down under a deadline to produce a dozen or so songs for a musical. I have. If even one or two are outstanding, catchy, unique, entrancing, irresistible, unforgetable, timeless, immortal--then the writer has done well. If said writer happens to be extremely fortunate and talented and pulls something out of the air which is on a par with Jerome Kern, then he is Jerome Kern--or his equal, or the new Jerome Kern for these new times. But the Creator doesn't work like that. Melody masters are few and far between. It's like plumbing or carpentry--there are amateurs, apprentices, journeymen and masters. You might as well complain that there are so few great wines among the billions of gallons produced, or great diamonds among the tons of jewelry fabricated and sold. Simply put, songs are but rhythmic and logorhythmic combinations and confabulations. Some tunes ring truer than others, for a myriad of reasons, capturing the ear, mind and heart of the listener, transporting him or her to finer or less fine levels of feeling and being. Then again, there may be great songs out there that do not get presented, for one reason or another, to any listenership at large. That is why songwriters--frustrated lot that they are--attempt to shamelessly promote themselves by commenting on articles such as Mr. McWhorter's and pointing the reader to their own music website, such as I am doing in this instance.

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