The idea was that once people in general know a popular part of a song, usually the chorus, to take a break from singing it and instead tell the audiene to sing. They know this, therefore the band doesn't have to sing the chorus.
The band that was there was a small two person band, but popular among the crowd at the workshop. They had them sing their song and then show this by having them stop before the chorus while they vamped on their instruments and then the participants were told, "You sing it."
The band stopped singing and the majority of the people sang, "Nobody calls her baby. Nobody says I love you so. Nobody calls her baby. Oh, I guess she'll never know." The band didn't need to sing any of the lyrics for that chorus. There were enough people that knew them.
When you write, let the dialogue expose the subtext. Make your characters shut up. Perhaps you have a character where something like this happens. I'll call this character Bill and just make up names for the other characters. There's no significance in this blog post to the names of these characters.
(Bill and Mary have a huge argument about how to go about recruiting team members for their baseball team and Bill heads home.)
Bill: What a horrible day.
(Bill heads over to the piano and starts to play "Broken Wings." His sister comes out into the living room and listens to him play. After he is finished playing, they go to bed.)
There might be another time when Bill has just been fired from his job and he goes and plays "Broken Wings" on the piano and the same type of thing happens.
From simply reading that example, the subtext has already been shown. However, when beginning writing, it is tempting to put something like this afterwards. Let's call Bill's sister, Sally.
(His sister comes into the living room and listens to him play.)
Sally: Why do you always come play "Broken Wings?"
Bill: I've had a bad time. I need to feel like I can escape.
Sally: And that song makes it feel like you can escape?
Bill: Yes.
The second part isn't needed. We can already figure out that playing "Broken Wings" on the piano helps Bill to feel like he can escape from the bad situations and the bad feelings brought on by what happened to him in the world.
The subtext is exposed simply by Bill saying that it was a horrible day and then going to play "Broken Wings" on the piano, especially if it happens more than once in the play. You can make all your characters shut up because commentary on why Bill does this isn't needed. The subtext is there.
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