stream-of-conscious; no sleep; song covers

disclaimer: i fucked up my sleep schedule. my writing lately is mostly stream-of-consciousness and edging on unintelligible. apologies.

i realized the other day that a lot of the songs i've been into lately are covers. a vampire weekend cover by esau mwamwaya and radioclit; outkast by obadiah parker; mgmt by jónsi; and just tonight i stumbled onto three seperate versions of the same song by three amazing artists (included later). in all of these instances, i discovered/was suggested/listened to the songs because of my love for their original versions.

in other instances, however, i've been really into a song only to realize that it was a cover. "heartbeats" by josé gonzalez is a great example. i was watching the video on youtube, scrolling through the comments, and came across an ongoing debate on wheter gonzalez's version was better than the original. color me surprised when i discovered that the original version was not acoustic like gonzalez's but actually a sweedish pop song.

and then, tonight, i was listening to the bright eyes album "noise floor" and "devil town" came on. i decided to look for the music video on youtube (where, apparantly, i learn the most information). as it turns out, "devil town" is originally by daniel johnston (most famous for his album "hi, how are you," you may have seen the album cover on kurt cobain's shirt). beck also covered it. i listened to all three versions (which i've included below) and i loved them all individually, for their own reasons.

daniel johnston:


bright eyes:


beck:



WHICH BRINGS ME TO: i've been thinking a lot about originality in writing and music and i'm trying to figure out if anyone really has a "voice" and i don't really know if they do. i think that if someone has some sort of distinctive writing style or musical style it's just because they OWN it most, ya know? not that it's theirs, but just that they do it best? or that they're most recognizably associated with it? i dunno. my friend max (check out his music!) was talking about how "originality" should really be thought about as "creativity" because, in reality, everyone is borrowing from someone else. i completely agree.

p.s. i'm re-reading on the road by jack kerouac right now and this version has a really interesting introduction. apparantly, kerouac spent years trying to stop writing like thom wolfe and, when he finally did, adopted the feverish narrative that neal cassidy used in the letters he wrote to kerouac. even jack kerouac isn't wholly "original."