In February 2016 when Beyoncé dropped “Formation” the first single from her album Lemonade, nearly all of the critics agreed on two things: the song and video were a critical success, and the lyrics and images were deeply personal.

Discussing the song in the New York Times, Jenna Wortham wrote that Beyoncé, “wants us to know — more than ever — that she’s still grounded, she’s paying attention and still a little hood.” And compared to her previous album, Lemonade feels like, “a rebuttal or perhaps an addendum to her thesis statement about who she is and what she stands for, but on her own terms of course.”

Did Beyoncé protest these assumptions? Did she try to introduce some distance between her inner life and her music? Hardly. In a gesture she surely knew would not remain private, she sent Wortham flowers and a note that read in part, “Thanks for understanding my heart.”

That critics and fans alike make connections between a singer’s repertoire and her personal life – and that performers encourage such connections - is not a new phenomenon. The urge to make such connections seems particularly strong in the case of artists like Beyoncé, who write their own songs or collaborate with songwriters. (Similar assumptions are made about Taylor Swift, for example.) But why do so many listeners make these connections and why do singers seem to endorse them, at least some of the time?

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 "We want to feel that singers are performing in a genuine way and conveying something true of their real lives and experience."
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The answer has to do with our desire for authenticity from musicians. In the case of paintings and other works of art that are physically instantiated, “authentic” is opposed to “fake” or “forgery.” In popular music, “authenticity” sometimes means fidelity to a tradition (as in “authentic Delta blues.”) However another sense of “authenticity” opposes it to insincerity. When we stop to think about it, we realize that singers are performers who must “put on a show.”  We recognize that Beyoncé and other artists might want to sing material that is “out of character” or about topics other than their own lives. Yet at the same time, we want to feel that singers are performing in a genuine way and conveying something true of their real lives and experience. Such “sincerity” is one of the forms of authenticity that we expect from singers.

Human beings are pretty good at detecting insincerity in others. For example, we can usually recognize the difference between a genuine smile (what psychologists call a “Duchenne smile”) and a fake smile. Insincere communication – or communication that is perceived by the recipient to be insincere – damages relationships. The hypocritical apology, the disingenuous compliment, the reluctantly given invitation – all of these can be sources of tension between people. They can even end friendships.