Emma's Mixtape

I have a Golden Globes story and I'm just going to cut to the chase: I met Bruce Springsteen. He was three feet from me at the CAA party and I went "Oh my God, it's Springsteen. Quick!" Like, "Quick, get a butterfly net made out of manifest destiny!" Or "Quick, pass me the chloroform we use for highways jammed with broken heroes on last chance power drives". But really, what do you do in the face of your hero? Obviously, you ask 'Wrestler' director, Darren Aronofsky, "Darren, shall I make Springsteen look at my Springsteen tattoo?" And obviously Darren says "Emma, I don't really think you should do that". So you say, "Okay" and march up over to tap Bruce on the shoulder and say "Hey!" (lips stained with red lipstick and misguided confidence) "I have a Bruce tattoo!" "Oh!" demurs Bruce, baffled, polite, increasingly Christ-like with age, "Where is it?" "Here!" you announce, and force The Boss to hold your ankle. "Oh..." responds The Boss, for how can he respond? "It's quite small," (he seems relieved), "but it's very nice." "Thanks!" you beam, and "Bye!"

So, I don't feel I blew my big chance to meet Bruce Springsteen because, in fairness, I didn't so much "meet" him, as confuse him. That's something different entirely

In conclusion: I haven't drunk alcohol since I was nineteen.

Late today I thought "You know, I should really check I was right to commend the White Stripes for covering 'Isis'". So I checked. I was an idiot! I one hundred percent take it back. And I suppose, therefore, I ought take back my allegory about life. Don't worry, I'll swap it for a new one tomorrow. And I take back all the times I've said "Bob Dylan is a far less important writer than Leonard Cohen or Paul Simon" (which is the sort of thing you'd hear all the time if you were related to me/dated me/lived with me/sat next to me on a plane/drove past my house on the way to post your mail.) Oh. And I take back all the times I shouted "Urgh, puke!" when my gentile girlfriends said they find young Bob Dylan attractive. Because this video is one of the hottest things I've ever seen:



PS: I one hundred percent take back my taking it back if it turns out that Bob Dylan is only hot in clown make-up.

I talked about accents the other week, in context of my favourite singers. Today I was thinking about cover versions as an allegory for life and love. Someone just gave me a copy of this early White Stripes cover of Bob Dylan's song 'Isis' (the video below is crappy but the audio is perfect). It's bold to make something so well known your own, or at least to have a go. I am very pro-cover versions and have listed a top five inviting you to offer your own.

There are, after all, a finite number of musical notes and, ultimately, a finite number of ways to arrange them. In the end all that can really change is the tonality with which you play those notes. Where this takes me is here: someone has loved as hard as you, before you did. You are not the first to cry for what you've cried for, mourn what you mourn, fight for what you fight for, get turned on by the things that turn you on. This sounds harsh, but when you accept that you aren't feeling anything new, only feeling it in your own way, your own tonality...it's very freeing.





This is also a pretty interesting one, though many of you will know it already - the Israeli singer, Yael Naim, doing Britney Spears' 'Toxic':



Some faves of mine:

Happy Mondays - Stayin Alive by the Bee Gees
John Lennon - Be My Baby by The Ronettes
Townes Van Zandt - Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones
Dusty Springfield - Son of a Preacher Man by Gladys Knight (yes she came before Aretha)
Aretha Franklin - Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles

I want to tell you more about Istanbul, but it may take a breath. I'm so unbelievably jet lagged, it feels like my brain has been dancing for days in red high heels, and now its finally fallen over...