Someone recently asked me how I choose the pop songs I play and sing.
It usually works like this. I hear a song that I haven’t heard in a while but that I’ve always loved. This can be a song by Neil Young, the Cure, Galaxie 500, Johnny Cash, the Beatles, Springsteen, anything really. The important thing is the song has to move me in some way, either it has to have a personal association or be gorgeous or be gorgeously bizarre. The internet has made figuring out chord changes easy, so that’s not an issue. The big question is can I somehow make it mine?
I’m very fond of doing fey folky covers of songs that might not lend themselves to fey folky renditions. Prince’s “When You Were Mine” is a prime example. Somehow it works, and I don’t want to brag, but I kind of made it mine.
However, recently I thought there was a song I wanted to play. “Something on Your Mind” by Karen Dalton.
Here it is.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsYHN7eCCtU[/youtube]The first time I heard Dalton’s voice it was almost too strange to bear. But when I heard this song a second time I began to fall in love with that instrument. Now her voice moves me to tears, this song most of all. I love the lyrics and the melody. You might say this song strikes me to the core.
So I looked up the chords and it was easy enough to play. And I strummed through it, singing it, but it wasn’t right. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t trying to imitate her voice, just as I don’t try to imitate any of the singers whose songs I cover. I sing all the songs in my own weak, slightly off-key voice. But this song, it didn’t feel right.
I don’t believe that certain pop songs are uncoverable because they have achieved some kind of perfection or because they have some kind of inherent sacredness. So those weren’t the reasons I couldn’t cover it. What then?
Simply put: I can’t make this song mine. There’s nothing I could do with it that would make me enjoy playing and performing it. I would forever be dissatisfied with my rendition, because this song lives and breathes because of Dalton’s voice, my voice would only kill the song. I’m okay with this knowledge. There are plenty of great songs out there for me to butcher. As Dirty Harry Callahan once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
As a filmmaker, I know my limitations. I can’t imagine making a giant blockbuster full of special effects. (Take note Mr. Big Shot Hollywood producer. ) So many things are involved in making a film like that, so many things that aren’t part of my vocabulary or language or voice that I wouldn’t even know how to begin. A Life’s Work, though, is well within my limitations. I may have questions and doubts from time to time, but I’ve always known this was a story I could tell, and that my voice could tell it in a way that satisfied me. (Well, mostly satisfied me.)
What do you think about knowing your limitations? Do you ignore them or acknowledge them?