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1. this idea

We first had the idea for The She's So Unusual Project driving back to Kosovo from a friend's wedding in Novi Sad. I don't remember why I'd put Cyndi Lauper's original album on my ipod. I don't think I'd ever given it much thought before. But we listened to it at some point during that drive, and I was surprised by how many really famous songs there were on that record, and also how many very good songs. In fact, I found that I liked the album a lot.

I was thirteen when She's So Unusual came out. I hadn't fully immersed myself into any kind of modern music yet. When I did, I listened to the music that the other guys in my neighborhood listened to. At first it was classic rock radio, and KISS and Metallica, and then later a lot of punk, funk, reggae, blues, and soul. Cyndi Lauper would not have been on the playlist, but, like anyone else my age, I was aware of the songs, and they were a part of my cultural landscape, and I certainly didn't dislike any of them.

Listening to it on this April afternoon drive twenty nine years later, I recognized a lot of shared influences. It turned out of course that the music she'd made was inspired by the same music I had been listening to around that time. Reggae for sure, but also straight up rock 'n' roll and a lot of blues structures too. Even the “filler” songs on the album had integrity, and a lot of those were written by other songwriters of the period, which—along with the lyrics' explicit statements about women, sex and so on—made the record seem like some kind of very special and successful distillation of a moment in time.

It also seemed like a good piece of art. When the album ended, I told my wife that I loved it, and that maybe I should do a cover of it. Sure, she said. And, can I sing on it? Because that's what she always says when I tell her about a new project I'm thinking of.

I wrote a friend in Houston. I'm thinking about covering this album, I said. What do you think?

Yes, she said, you should.

So that's how it happened.

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The She's So Unusual Project will be available for you to download here and elsewhere in about two weeks. We'll be taking the unusual (for us) step of selling it in order to cover the cost of licensing. Come back tomorrow for more...