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<\/p>\nSincerity fallacy:<\/strong> The idea that the quality of a song (or of any literary or artistic work) can be measured by the extent to which it sincerely reflects the beliefs, emotions, or experiences of its creator. This is not to say that a “sincere” song is necessarily a bad song, merely that its sincerity is not a useful tool in judging its merit.<\/p>\n The idea that sincerity matters is a holdover from the Romantic era<\/strong>. The Romantic artist was supposed to have been a special creature who felt more deeply than ordinary people, and thus his poetry or music was thought to embody these deep emotions and give the reader or listener access to states of being he or she could not ordinarily experience. This gives rise to a corollary of the sincerity fallacy \u2013 the idea that more powerful emotions, whether greater joy or deeper pain, lead to greater works of art. To take an example from a recent RTH thread, because Phil Lesh<\/strong>\u2019s father was dying while the bassist was writing (the music to) “Box of Rain”, the song is thought to achieve a level of profundity it might otherwise not have.<\/p>\n And this idea leads to another favorite RTH charge \u2013 backstory alert!<\/em> When discussing the merits of a particular piece of music, allusions to the life history of the artist of the “real life” experiences that are depicted in the song are always suspect. The backstory of a song or album may be interesting, but any use of it to bolster an argument regarding the quality of said song or album leaves one open to being on the receiving end of a severe backstory-alert smackdown.<\/p>