Avilable today wherever you stream, the Music That Changed My Life compilation album showcases 15 independent artists covering influential tracks by their favourite artists.

We reached out to the artists on the compilation to find out why they chose the songs they did. Grab your preferred streaming service link here and read on for those answers below.

Featuring:

Blue Dirt Girl covering Little Conversations by Concrete Blondes
Dragons and Astronauts covering Almost by Bowling For Soup
Marc Schuster covering Boy In The Bubble by Paul Simon
Prime Birds covering Place to Be by Nick Drake
Fuzzruckus covering Ghost Town by Cheap Trick
Brian Lambert covering Anything You Want by Spoon
Lavender Fire covering Are You Really Okay by Sleep Token
Neither Could Dylan covering Futures by Jimmy Eat World
Scoopski covering California Dreamin’ by The Mamas and The Papas
Quizboy covering Re-Education Through Labour by Rise Against
Timothy Simmons covering Don’t Box Me In by Stewart Copeland
TheFifthSister covering Cashmere by Nerf Herder
Billy Lowry covering Marigold by Nirvana
Connor Dean covering Never Meant by All American Football
TruckDog and the Go People covering I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) by The Electric Prunes

On Their Chosen Song

Fuzzruckus: One of the first Cheap Trick songs I heard was “Ghost Town” on the jukebox at Pizza Hut. I always loved the song, and felt it’s a very underrated song in their catalog. It features one of my favorite Rick Nielsen guitar solos. Once I figured out how to play it, I decided I was going to cover the song and release it as single.

Dragons & Astronauts: When Josh, the dragon to my astronaut, and I would play open mic nights years ago, we’d play our acoustic version of “Almost” by Bowling For Soup. It was co-written and produced by Butch Walker. Both big influences for us. The song is part of the foundation that we’ve built our new project on.

Scoopski: Aside from 2000’s pop-punk and 90’s alternative, one of the places where Mrs. Scoopski and I have the most crossover in taste is our love of 60’s pop-rock. “California Dreamin” was always a favorite of ours to listen to on road trips, and we always imagined a cool, Weezer-ish version of the song complete with all the harmonies, so we decided to try and do it!

Lavender Fire: My name is Lavender Fire and I’m a piano-based singer/songwriter from Virginia. For this compilation, I chose to cover the song Are You Really Okay by Sleep Token. A few years ago, a friend sent me a link to this song. He prefaced it by saying he knew I didn’t listen to metal, but he wanted me to hear this song. As someone who has dealt with darkness and seen people she loves go through their own depression, this song hit me hard. I cried when I first heard it and this song still makes me cry. So I felt like I had to record my own version of this song so that more people would hear it and be impacted the way that I was.

Marc Schuster: Paul Simon’s Graceland was one of the first CDs I ever owned, and the opening track, ‘The Boy in the Bubble,” served as a gateway to the joyful lyricism and cross-cultural, genre-bending musical experimentation that permeates the entire album. It opened my ears and my mind to a whole new world that I wanted to be a part of — and made that fourteen-year-old me feel a little more worldly just for listening to it.

Quizboy: All about the lyrics. It was deeply resonating then and seems to have only grown more relevant as time has passed to today.

Timothy Simmons: When I was a young kid learning to play the drums, I was obsessed with Stewart Copeland (like many drummers who grew up in the 80s!). A true fanboy, I sought out everything he recorded, ad came eventually to his amazing soundtrack for the Francis Ford Coppola film, “Rumble Fish”. It amazed me that he played every instrument on the album, and this immediately became my goal in life – to write and record music in which I played all the instruments. This song has always been a clarion call to me – to create my own sound, to find my own voice – to never be boxed in!

Connor Dean: Well anyone that knows me knows how much I freak’n love sports.

Brian Lambert: The song I did was Anything You Want. It came from Spoon’s album “Girls Can Tell” which was my introduction into the world of Indie Rock after the grunge era. This song in particular represents my college years in Austin, a time and place that no longer exists that changed the entire trajectory my life.

Prime Birds: In the year 2000 I was a 13 year old boy who was about to pledge his musical identity to all things metal. But that year I also discovered Nick Drake (yes, from the Volkswagen commercial) and I think his gentle voice, calming and lush imagery, and his wholly unique acoustic playing played a big role in keeping my musical persona grounded, diverse, and always open to growth and change. I think Nick Drake’s music planted a seed in my adolescent brain that told me I could express myself in ways that didn’t involved banging my head…even if I still did a lot of that, too! That’s how I know his music has changed my life. Choosing a favourite Nick Drake song is an impossible task, but choosing to cover “Place to Be” was easy – it’s one of the few pieces where Nick’s guitar genius simplified itself enough for me to strum along.

Neither Could Dylan: This has been a pretty massively influential song for my as a musician. It was the first song I ever performed live with my very first band back in high school and it holds one of the most important lyrics that I’ve carried with me ever since, “believe your voice can mean something”.

---

Which cover is your favourite? Sound off in the comments.