This year, I’ve been working to create a lot more content. Usually, I post one or two covers a month, and I’ve been sharing originals as I am able to find the time to work on them. It’s been wonderful for me in that practicing my craft has helped me refine it. Plus, it has the added benefit of giving me an outlet to make music that I love just for the sake of loving music. But there’s also a hope to build an audience for my work. Visibility is the greatest currency for musician’s in this day and age. Get enough views on your YouTube video, and YouTube adds advertisements and monetizes it. Likes and shares on Facebook increase distribution, generating more views.

Sometimes, I struggle with feeling like I’m working in a vacuous echo chamber. I think about how to adjust the work that I’m doing to get more views, more likes, more affirmation. Then, I end up not doing most of those things. I want to get better, not pander. So I keep working at it…getting my vocals cleaner, learning to use my studio equipment, picking songs that truly inspire me and working for inspired performances. It’s hard to see if I’m really getting anywhere or just spinning my wheels. I haven’t done anything that’s really gone viral, and my numbers have been pretty stable. I’m ok with this. Yes, I’d like to have a break out moment, some hit, some recognition, but I’m spending a different currency: I love what I’m doing and putting that passion out into the world. And that, for me, is where the true value lies.

Some songs are horrible songs that are salvaged by a great artist. Nat King Cole was a great artist like that. “Ke-Mo Ky-Mo” is a pretty bad song, but somehow, he makes it sound amazing. He was just a gifted storyteller, and aptly fit the description of someone who I’d listen to as he sang the phone book.

Some songs are fantastic songs, but they get short changed because of a mediocre/horrible artist. I feel this way about a lot of Taylor Swift songs. I’m not particularly fond of her as a singer, but she has the pulse on her generation and culture and has written some great songs that get easily dismissed as “Taylor Swift” songs. “Ours” is a great song. So is “Safe & Sound” that she recorded with the Civil Wars for the Hunger Games soundtrack.

I think Budapest by George Ezra is a song that falls into that second category. Its a great song, but it just isn’t catching on as widely as it deserves in large part because of the performance/recording. Ezra mangles the vowels so much in his version that you can’t really tell what the words are. So I’ve tried to redeem the song. Moving it onto the piano, I borrowed a driving Afro-pop rhythm to give it some drive and energy. And then, I tried to sing it with clear, understandable words. The best singers tell good stories.