5. I Kissed a Girl

Jazz musicians have always taken popular songs and created personal versions of them. My album "Standards Vol. 1" was largely dedicated to claiming legitimacy for my own generation's music by doing versions of songs I grew up with. Continuing in this spirit, I included a contemporary song for today.

The huge international success of Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" gave a glimpse of a new generation moving forward into a more tolerant and accepting world.

I saw Ms. Perry do an MTV unplugged version of this song in which she created a sort of jazz-club atmosphere and she used jazz musicians in her band. We used that version as our starting point. Our goal was to take her jazz implications and realize them completely.

One this tune I played guitar and piano simultaneously with no overdubs. The reason I do this is that lets me combine the two as a single instrument--an instrument with a huge range of tonal colors.