First, a bit of shameless self promotion:  my singer Bob played out one of my songs, on his own, with his own collaborator:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOIV00zGJGM&w=500]

 

Now, you can compare his version to the original version from my solo album (you can play it in the mp3 player on the right column).  It’s quite different.  Bob made my song his own.  And then it was made even more different by his freestylin’ guest, Tou Saiko Lee.

One of the measures of impactfulness of your song is when your song goes out of your hands and starts having its own life.  This is both exhilarating and scary from the original artist’s point of view.  It’s a bit like letting your kid go out to school or camp, where you can’t protect him/her no longer — you hope and trust that your kid will be OK.  The same thing happens when your song has any impact.  It’ll go off on its own, creating a journey or an evolution that perhaps even the original creator can’t see.

Listening to Bob’s version of my song, I can’t help but notice all the differences.  His phrasing is different, his tempo, the way he emphasizes different words — the song has a very different impression, one that’s not what I intended.  That’s a bit jarring on the first listen — but at the same time, I’m just filled with immense pride.  Sure, Bob’s my singer and partner, but I didn’t ask him to go play my songs for his solo gigs.  He liked it enough to learn it and make it his own without being asked to.  And he thought it was good enough to even include it in his own performance.  And he made something out of it that I couldn’t have.

All right, I’m getting a bit gushy, huh?  But you get the point.  Impactful songs will walk out of your little hands and have lives of their own.  And that’s a good thing.  Let them go, and celebrate the fact that your little creation was good enough to get out of your hands.