New Year's Resolution

I stole this idea from Tim Ferriss, a blogger who I find wildly entertaining. He mentioned on his podcast that he traded New Year's Resolutions with one of his friends - the idea being that an honest friend can point out the holes in your game a lot more effectively than you can find them yourself. (His goal for his caffeine-addicted friend was to drink nothing stronger than green tea for a year; his friend, noting that Tim was afraid of open water, challenged him to learn how to swim a mile. Both were successful, and, I imagine, living better lives for it.)

So, to test this scenario, I traded resolutions with one of my voice students. Names have been omitted to protect the innocent... But he was a young man with a lot of talent, and less confidence than he should have had. My goal for him was to get up in front of people once a month and sing a song in public - and he followed through! I couldn't be more proud, and it's made all the difference for him, both in his public performances and his private lessons.

Of course, if he follows through on his resolution, I have to follow through on mine, which was  a little more involved. Whatever the #1 song in iTunes is on the first of every month, I'm supposed to record a cover of that song. (If the same song is #1 two months in a row, I'm supposed to do the #2, etc, so there are no repeats.) The setlist looks like this:

1. January - Uptown Funk (Bruno Mars)
2. February - Thinking Out Loud (Ed Sheeran)
3. March - Love Me Like You Do (Ellie Goulding)
4. April - Bitch Better Have My Money (Rihanna)
5. May - See You Again (Wiz Khalifa)
6. June - Bad Blood (Taylor Swift)
7. July - Cool for the Summer (Demi Lovato)
8. August - Drag Me Down (One Direction)
9. September - What Do You Mean (Justin Bieber)
10. October - Hotline Bling (Drake)
11. November - Hello (Adele)
12. December - Everglow (Coldplay)

I have to give this guy credit: he cut me to the quick on this one. Anybody who knows me is aware that I don't put a lot of top-40 stuff in my setlist. And there's some really weird shit in that list - I had to rap. More than once. I had to cover Drake, and Rihanna, and Justin Bieber... This was a major challenge. So, I'll be dropping a new tune via this blog on even-numbered days in January, and you can hear all the weird stuff I've done to last year's iTunes #1 Hits.

Since logic is for chumps, I'm jumping around the setlist and starting with April's entry, "Bitch Better Have My Money" by Rihanna, shown in the video below. It's a powerful, poignant lyric, and I think there's something there everybody can relate to.

Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to get updates on when the next tunes drop. Thanks for listening in!

​