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Here's another quote from a Liz Phair review:

When the Supremes released "Love Child," Diana Ross had no conceivable justification for singing that she started her life in an old, cold, run-down tenement slum, other than that Motown's songwriters presumably believed that potential record-buyers liked to think she had. You can hardly get more cynical than that.

Here's a justification for singing it: Because that's how the song goes. Elvis didn't record "Jailhouse Rock" in prison. Johnny Cash never had "25 Minutes to Go". And the walrus, as we now know, was not John but Paul. They're songs, not memoirs.

But the over-the-top drama with which Ross sings it sold the song, both figuratively and literally; it sounds as lovely, as exhilarating, and as cathartic as if she really meant it.

She did mean it. It just wasn't about her.