Audiences of singer/songwriters: “we assume you write lyrics that tell true stories about yourself, whether you have said so or not, and we’ll dig up your past and analyze it alongside your lyrics so we can call you out for dishonesty”
Audiences of authors: “if we find out you have one (1) personal detail in common with the narrator of your book we will scream Author Insert and Mary Sue until we pass out from suffocation”
(update: this post unfairly implied that authors and singer-songwriters have equivalent but opposite problems. Actually, audiences of authors do both these two opposite things at the same time, because if we write a character that is not like us we get treated as if the character’s flaws are our own flaws and we are exactly as bad a person as the character. Singer-songwriters don’t know how fuckin easy they have it)