Last night, I was contacted by an old friend from high school with whom I used to make music. He said, “Hey, it’s coming up on the 30th anniversary of Liz Phair’s ‘Exile in Guyville’ album and I think we should do a song-for-song remake of the whole thing.” I thought, Why not? and thus spent the evening recording one of the songs off the album. It’s just a demo and has no vocals, but I laid down a drum track, two guitar tracks, and a keyboard track for the most notorious song on the album. It was decent and serves as a perfect example of the work of another artist filtered through my brain.

There’s something to be said for the work of others filtered through someone’s brain. I have, at various times over the years, recorded cover songs of other artists, and they have served as the perfect distillation of creativity for me. I sometimes say to my students, “Try to copy that filmmaker, and when you fail, you’ve created something entirely new.” That’s true. Whenever I try to record covers of songs, I end up trying to emulate what the artist is doing…I don’t try to do a note for note copy of it, but I try to create something that, in my mind at least, sounds like what the original artist did.

Very rarely does it sound like something the original artist did. Some people would say that’s a good thing. Some would say it’s awful. They’re both right.

But I digress.