"I had spent an entire summer making a prototype and made 20 renditions and none of them worked," Mr. Smith recalled.
As often as not, the dictum to put a new spin to an old song results in the kind of confusion that made the renditions by Danny Gokey (this year's No. 3) of Aerosmith and Joe Cocker hits unfocused travesties.
"Once I got kind of low in Los Angeles because I was drinking a lot, and my dad helped me," Ms. Stritch recalled in that unmistakable, raspy voice that has made her renditions of "Zip" and "The Ladies Who Lunch" part of Broadway musical legend.
The last was not the classic, freshly made, warm rendition but a cool custard that was nevertheless delicious.
Jill Grove, mezzo-sporano, was assured in a cycle of seven popular Spanish songs by de Falla; to her credit, she didn't color her upper register, as many mezzos do, to reflect the power of her chest voice, which also made her rendition of Cole Poter's "So In Love" fresh, natural, and her own.
At the Secret Garden Party, in September 2006, Allen made a rendition of the song and afterwards stated: "The festival was well good, particularly as Lester, my ex, who I wrote 'Smile' about, and subsequently sold his story to the papers, had a tent called 'the shit tent' positioned directly opposite the main stage.
He began making sculptural renditions of his Brushstrokes paintings in the early 1980s in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.
He says he's a self-taught artist, which makes his renditions even more impressive.
Still, meeting him there made George's renditions of Tamilchelvan's soliloquies seem less strange.
The obsession with creating physical manifestations of the lovable waveform seems to be growing every day, whether folks are visualizing the sound of dubstep with vinyl or making the process mass-production-friendly 3D renditions made of paper.
