Be Okay

At the kitchen where I work, we listen to satellite radio. There is AAA station that we all like, and it actually plays many of the artists that are in my iTunes playlists, but they so make some weird choices. They play Bruce Cockburn, but most of the time the Cockburn song they play is from 1984, "If I Had A Rocket Launcher." Either they are trying to make a political statement or they never listened to his 9 more recent albums. And even though one of the benefits from satellite radio is suppose to be their much broader playlist than traditional radio, this station occasionally gets stuck in a rut.

A couple of weeks ago it was a John Mellencamp rut. They played two straight weeks of Melloncamp. That's right, 14 days, from the John Cougar days, then the John Cougar Mellencamp days, and finally the John Mellencamp days. They did a Sheryl Crow week earlier in the year, but at least that week was largely Crow acting as the DJ and choosing other artist's music to play. I could tolerate Crow the DJ, but two weeks of Mellencamp is two weeks too many.

This past week, the rut they fell into was with one song. I heard the same song, "Be Okay," three times in the same day. It was catchy and I could not get the chorus ("I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay, I just want to be okay...) out of my head. That night I tried to find out more about the song and discovered that it was recorded by Ingrid Michaelson.

Michaelson is one of those indie artist who is experimenting with new ways to make a living in the music world. Early on, she relied on her myspace page as well as lots of performance in coffeeshops. Her first big break was when three of her songs were used on "Grey's Anatomy" (a guilty pleasure of mine) The producers of "Grey's Anatomy" asked her to write a song specifically for the show, and it was prominently played during closing moments of the 2007 season finale. Last fall, Old Navy used one of her songs ("The Way I Am") in a commercial.

It used to be that music fans worries about their favorite arists, like Bob Dylan or The Who, "selling out." Today, in part to avoid the artistic compromises that come from signing with a music label, even indie artists are using TV shows and commercials as a way to spread their music. It has worked for Michaelson.

All of this post is mostly an excuse to post this video of Michaelson displaying her knowledge of pop culture from the year 1990. I bet her concerts are fun.