One reason that this new album exists is because I like singing these songs to people, and so I like having the luxury of going out on tour and singing for fans. Some aspects of that I relate to, but I like performing. You get to write hits with other artists, but then those artists are the ones who have to spend the next couple of years singing them over and over again on the road. In some ways, it seems like you’ve got the best of all music jobs. Just picture me playing it at a show - does that feel good? So I’ve had that rule of thumb for a long time, and what that led to was a greater and greater comfort with me performing my co-writes at my own gigs. In other words, not try to guess whether the public at large would like something - not try to guess whether my collaborator’s fans would like something. I’ve long had this idea that the best way to check whether a song that I’m working on with someone else is good is to imagine me singing it for an audience of my fans. Was part of the appeal of doing this album the idea that you wanted to reclaim these songs? Or show how you would approach them on your own? We also discussed why being pegged as the nice guy by girls growing up may have helped him have commercial success with female artists in his adult life. We talked about that - and about his daughter Coco, whose arrival led to “Closing Time” and whose difficult early years and cognitive disabilities prompted him to walk away from Semisonic. As someone who always enjoyed Semisonic’s comforting, melodic pop music, I was curious how easy it was for him to give up the limelight. home, Wilson is thoughtful and introspective as he looks back at his journey from frontman to the man behind the scenes helping other people write radio smashes. “Not Ready to Make Nice” and “Someone Like You” are on here, and it’s striking to hear all of these songs sung in that sweet, plaintive voice Wilson once brought to Semisonic. The record is populated with his versions of other people’s hits. Wilson still records the occasional solo album of new material, but on his latest disc, Re-Covered, he’s essentially covering himself. Besides his collaboration with the Dixie Chicks, which netted him one of his two Grammys, he’s had a hand in songs for John Legend, Taylor Swift, Josh Groban, Chris Stapleton, and most prominently, Adele, with whom he co-wrote “Someone Like You.” And so, he became a songwriter working for other artists, slowing accumulating an impressive resume of hits in different genres. That Grammy moment highlighted the transformation Wilson had undergone in the decade since “Closing Time.” A former member of the alt-rock group Trip Shakespeare, which he formed with his brother Matt, Wilson enjoyed his greatest commercial success leading Semisonic, a pop-rock band that went platinum with 1998’s Feeling Strangely Fine, which contained “Closing Time,” a seemingly romantic song about last call that was actually inspired by the upcoming birth of his first child.īut by 2001’s All About Chemistry, which failed to match Feeling Strangely Fine’s commercial success, Wilson was looking for a new direction.