Indigo Girls

And since I read your book, I push myself several times.

A friend wrote about Indigo Girls were coming.

Who wants to go? I'm like, yes.

I said yes to like three things in one week that I might normally said, oh, you know, I have a. an interview tomorrow I got to get ready for.

While the lyrics of those songs may not reflect specific characters or anything from the movie, using Wonderful Life in the title is a little more than coincidental.

One of the most covered of those songs is Shelly Wright's It Really Is a Wonderful Life, which was first covered by Mindy Smith in 2007, and then a few years later by the Indigo Girls.

Shelly didn't actually record her own version until 2018 on her album Santa Will Find You.

Matthew West, Zendaya, Lara Fabian, The Corgis, and Gwen Stefani have all recorded songs simply called Wonderful Life.

So my song of choice, folks, drumroll.

Thank you, Riggs, is Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls.

And why did I choose it? Okay, so I don't know if you know this about me, Mike, but...

i like analyzing things and i love the meaning behind this song it really struck me um and let's see what how old was i i think about 17 or 18 when it came out so i'll paint the scene the year was 1989 the hair was big It was starting to calm down, but it was still big back then.

So I'm curious to hear, like when you heard the song that I picked and listened to the lyrics, did they strike you at all? Like what came up for you?

It's a great question.

And I will be honest, I really did not listen to a lot of Indigo Girls growing up or even in my adult life.

And until you picked this song, which wasn't that long ago, you know what? I actually remember we had the pleasure of being in Montana together not too long ago.

And then I started finding a lot of queer artists.

So there's two sisters, two Canadian twin sisters called Tegan and Sarah, the Indigo Girls, Annie DeFranco, Tracy Chapman, Brandi Carlile, of course.

And I think for me at that time, listening to those artists just mattered in a way that I probably actually didn't really understand at the time.

There was just something about hearing female artists or, you know, gender neutral artists and particularly queer artists making music about their lives, their relationships, their desires, anger, heartbreak, all of it without filtering it through this kind of male perspective.

I don't know.

I've thought about maybe the story by Brandi Carlile because it's about the Marx life.

leaves on you and yeah living life in a kind of whole and messy way and but I can imagine that that's quite devastating at a funeral maybe like closer to fine by the indigo girls because it's like really gay it's folky it's questioning it's not pretending to have all the answers in life and and it's got that kind of fantastic communal sing-along quality because most people know that song and um Yeah, it just feels very much like I spent my life trying to understand things and eventually realize there aren't any neat answers, which I feel is my philosophy in life.

So yeah, and then everyone can sing like, I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains.

yeah

but they're only five bucks each so i got a couple issues that way i found some really nice issues i'm i'm pretty happy with my purchases and at this point i'm like Well, my original plan was the next day to drive home because I was going to go to the Indigo Girls concert, but their bus driver passed away, so they canceled the concert.

Oh, that sucks.

Yeah, so I still never got to see the Indigo Girls.

After the con, we walk over to Brian and Jason's hotel, and we get our stuff, and I open my stuff, and I'm like, where did you go to sign this? Because I don't see his name on the front of these.

And we keep going through, and I don't see names.

So there's all this different stuff, and, you know, from Gwen Stefani to Ani DiFranco.

Indigo Girls, really, they're Galileo.

I can't remember.

I think that's what the album was called.