Sister and nieces and I did our local monthly "Art Crawl" in downtown Franklin, TN. Local businesses feature work by local artists and serve wine and snacks. One shop had a musician on the front porch. I don't remember the song, but it was one that I recognized and it was so bad that we spent very little time at this stop because the music was so hard to tolerate.
Going back the same way to where our cars were parked, I happily commented to my sister, "They have a different singer. She's so much better than the guy who was here earlier." My older niece replied, "It's the same guy." And it was, but I was not the only one in our little party who was confused.
We all stopped on the street to experience this phenomenon. It was the same musician, still performing acoustically, but his voice was almost feminine. It was a different kind of song, but still one we all knew and it was amazing to listen to.
Do all musical performers sound so different when they play and sing alternate kinds of music and lyrics? If that were the case, I thought they should find what they sing well and stick to the kind of music that makes them sound good. That made sense to me until my writer's brain kicked in and put up an argument.
I have written picture books, young adult, christian/inspirational, essays, genre fiction and poetry. Some of these things I do better than others and some I don't do well at all. I write terrible poetry, but I do it occasionally because I enjoy it and I recognize that it is a good exercise for my creativity and writing skills.
This must apply to musicians and artists and any work or craft people do. If we don't try different things, how do we learn what we are good at? If we don't practice things we struggle with, how do we improve? There's a reason we are encouraged to "step outside of our comfort zone" and see what we find and what were are capable of - or not. The more we do it and the farther we go, the more we can learn.
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My problem, as you are well aware, is that I am horrible at stepping out of my comfort zone. Which means I never get better at anything. It's sort of a catch-22.
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