There is some very good writing above with well made points. I am impressed with the heartfelt perspectives and sympathize with the concerns expressed. So... please don't regard this post as a change of subject or a hijack of the thread but...

sop - a thing given or done as a concession of no great value to appease someone whose main concerns or demands are not being met.

When there is talk of or a suggestion to make a song request I believe it is a sop.

Below is my post from January this year. It is post #5 from the thread "Song lesson requests?", Open Discussion sub-forum. I've added the bold emphasis for this post.

Song lesson requests? #5 01/21/2021 -------------------------------------------

There use to be a Song Request sub-forum with hundreds if not thousands of posts. That was removed a year or two ago and, as far as I can tell, those posts by the many GT members are no longer accessible, even to the members who wrote them.

Other than the odious wholescale removal of members' posts it makes little difference... of the hundreds of requests by members, none were honored. At least, none that I tracked which covered about the last three years before the removal of the request sub-forum.

While one can do a search, e.g., "song requests", and the posts will be listed under "Song Lesson Requests" forum the posts themselves cannot be reviewed. Click on the search results and it takes one to the song request form. Posts using that form are also blocked from GT members.

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I'd like to think there have been requests that were turned into song lessons but, now approaching twelve years as a GT member, I don't know of any. I'd have to find/check my notes but I believe I tracked over a hundred requests that never resulted in a lesson. Of course, requests are now hidden from GT member's view so it's possible there have been lessons since that block was instituted but, I for one, am very skeptical.

My point: make your requests for songs. If it's what you want, make requests for songs representing a wider range of race/ethnicity, gender or genre. Just keep your expectations for a request response low. Very low.