Grace

I was first introduced to the album Grace, by Jeff Buckley, my freshman year of college. And at that point he'd already drowned and was already mythologized, and at that point I was already more interested in his posthumous album, My Sweetheart the Drunk, because of the ways it was less polished, although I was assured that this was not what Jeff Buckley would have wanted because look at the smoothness of Grace. Wouldn't it have wound up more like Grace?

So I listened to Grace and I own Grace and I'm very familiar with Grace and I like the songs on it.

Only... I keep gradually recognizing not only how much of Grace is covers, but how much of Grace is straight imitations. He's not just singing "Lilac Wine." He's singing "Lilac Wine" exactly like Nina Simone. He's singing "Corpus Christi Carol" like Janet Baker, and Janet Baker sings it how everybody sings Corpus Christi Carol, because that's how Benjamin Britten wrote it. My love for that song probably doesn't have much to do with Jeff Buckley and probably has a lot to do with how much I like Benjamin Britten.

I feel confused about what to feel because I could say that Jeff Buckley introduced me to those songs, but I sort probably would have found them anyway. We live in an age of recorded music. There was not a time Jeff Buckley was alive when he would have had to say "let me sing it to you so you know what I'm talking about." He could always have put on the record.

I'm not sure what the point of cover bands is, if they're not reinterpreting. I mean, I sing karaoke and I love to. But I mostly do it alone in a room, because who cares? Who cares that I can sing that song the same way it's sung on the recording? I sing Lilac Wine like Nina Simone does. I'm not Nina Simone.

I don't know. I run into this problem with Cream too, with early blues, although there at least there's an actual recording technology gap.

I feel weird about it. Simultaneously, I am in the process of ordering the Benjamin Britten sheet music.