In 2021 I released an EP of cover songs. They're pretty Lo-Fi; I was going through what I refer to as my "garage pop" phase when I recorded it, and one of the tracks I remade was Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally". It's a decent version, with synthesized strings, oboe and french horns.
A crazy thing happened. I have the ability to check my ongoing stgreams on Spotify, as does anyone who has an artist account (and I actually have two).and a month after the release I had a reported 2 MILLION streams of this song. If you did a search of the song on Google my name came up as the original artist.
I am not. I was 7 years old when the original song came out, and Gilbert O'Sullivan's version is the definitive one. How the hell had this happened? Especially when no other track on that EP had even 1,000 streams?
As you can imagine, somewhere in the background of however Spotify works somebody crossed the streams and I was getting credit for Gilbert O'Sullivan's streams. Now the links this generated for Google weren't actually fooled by this: If you clicked on the link referencing me it would go to O'Sullivan's version. But my distributor reported these numbers to the performing rights societies (I'm a member of BMI) and red flags went up all over the freakin' place.
As much as I'd like to get the revenue from streams of that volume this couldn't be allowed to stand. After a few letters and some correspondence between myself and O'Sullivan's management we traced the source of the issue, asked for an audit, and the numbers got fixed. It made for a seriously confusing royalties statement. I have no idea how it looked to Gilbert O'Sullivan himself - we've never met or communicated.
So why am I telling you about this? Because I got an e-mail this morning reminding me of that audit, saying that another one had been requested and this time my numbers were not in question. His streams had been confused with another person who had covered it. A LOT of people have covered this song.
By the way, Gilbert is still with and and still working. His most recent album, "Driven" came out in 2022.
Now to actual work.
I've been working off and on on a riff-driven blues track called "Thank you". I only had a couple of verses written, but today I finished the lyrics. It won't be on the album, but I may put it out as a single. It's a real smart-ass song and I admit I like those.
As for the album...
I have a track called "August Wedding" that I'm trying and trying to save and use what I've recorded but I think I've reached the point where I'm going to scrap it all and start over. I'm just not happy with the drum track, which was recorded all the way back in 2014. I've been working on it ever since and while Kyousuke played what I asked him to, I think I may have led him down the wrong path. I just can't get it to work. I'm talking with him tomorrow and we'll discuss what can be done but my gut feeling is that I'm going to have to start over.
This track is one of the key moments of the album and I don't want to dump the song. But I need to rework it.
I'm sorry that this is all I have to report today. I hope to do some recording tomorrow.
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