I mean, it was an honest mistake.
Last week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had singer Edwin McCain on his Dale Jr. Download podcast, and he came across as very down-to-earth and likable, and he’s pretty good friends with Dale which led to a pretty funny story about an awkward moment for Dale Jr.
He recalled inviting Edwin to play at their end of year office party, where he asked him to play a song that wasn’t his, which would be “In Your Eyes” by Jeffrey Gaines. It turns out, Napster, an old file sharing site that allowed people to share MP3 and other music online mislabeled the song. For all you kids who don’t remember Napster, it was basically the first streaming service… you could fire up the ol’ dial-up internet, hop on their peer-to-peer file sharing network, and essentially download any song you want, and then burn it onto a CD. It would take hours and hours to download a single song, but after a few days of tying up the phone lines and giving your computer countless viruses, you had a killer mix CD.
Metallica actually sued them, as did Dr. Dre, and eventually a bunch of record companies did as well for basically stealing music. And then users ended up getting sued for pirating music and it became a whole legal ordeal that resulted in Napster filing for bankruptcy, but it truly was a revolutionary time in music and set the stage for modern day streaming. Napster’s co-founder, Sean Parker, went on to help launch Facebook, becoming the company’s first President in 2004. In 2010, Parker became an early investor in a little Swedish music company called Spotify, and the rest as they say… is history.
Anyways, back to Dale… he still seemed pretty embarrassed telling the story:
“One of my most embarrassing moments I’ve been embarrassed by this… I asked you to come here and play for our company, at the end of the year we have a little party, and I asked you to come and do that, and I knew you might because you were such great friends with everybody. You show up, and we’re upstairs and you said ‘Hey, anything you want me to play tonight?’ Do you remember when I asked you to play?”
Edwin remembered it like it was yesterday, and as it turns out, Dale was one of many fans who had done the same thing:
“100%, and here’s the thing, it’s not your fault… no it’s not, because Napster mislabeled the song. You were like, ‘Hey, you do this really great cover of ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel, and I was like ‘Oh, that’s Jeffrey Gaines that does that.'”
Dale asked the obviously question, being whether or not Edwin was offended by the confusion (artists can be very sensitive), and he was completely understanding, saying he eventually started playing some of Shawn Mullins’ songs because girls would come to his concert thinking he was the one who sang it, and would always leave very disappointed:
“Not in any way, because it was mislabeled on Napster for a million years. I still play that song as a cover. I played it at the end of the jammer show, because I knew you were there. You know that mislabel thing got so out of hand, Shawn Mullins and I were mislabeled so bad.
I had like these 20 year-old girls just angry that I’m not playing ‘rock-a-bye’ at the show. I’m sorry you bought the wrong concert ticket, but then I was like, this is disappointing these girls. They’re genuinely showed up to hear one song, and then find out that they’re not gonna get to hear that song. I’m like, I’m not gonna let that go down that way.
And I called Shawn and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna start playing ‘Lullaby.’ He’s like good, I’m gonna start playing ‘I’ll Be,’ because he was having the exact same problem.'”
I can totally emphasize with Dale Jr. being embarrassed by that, because I can totally imagine I’d feel the same way if I told an artist I loved a song that wasn’t actually theirs and am such a big music fan… even though it wasn’t his fault, I tend to agree that he has every right to feel the way he does about it now even
The full episode is available here:
And I have to leave this here now too… forever a banger, in my humble opinion:
“I’ll Be”
“Lullaby” was a jam too,… but I imagine if that whole Napster tangent was foreign to you… so will these songs.
