Handle With Care is one of those songs that didn’t impact me on any kind of personal level until I heard it covered by Jenny Lewis and friends. This wasn’t due to the fact that the cover version is so different from the original, or that it took liberties in ways that made it stand out with more power and strength. It’s actually quite a straightforward cover version, a tribute more than a new interpretation. I think it had more to do with where I was, and what place my life was in, when I heard this version. It had to do with the state of perspective my mind/heart/soul was residing when I pressed play.

I was really in a place to hear it.

“Handle With Care” by Jenny Lewis And The Watson Twins, featuring M. Ward, Ben Gibbard, and Conor Oberst
from the album, Rabbit Fur Coat (2006)
Song Of The Day – February 15, 2011

“I’m so tired of being lonely,
I still have some love to give,
won’t you show me that you really care.”

I love the over-lapping voices, the sense of difference and sameness in the melody, the way that it feels like a family harmonizing together. It felt like the family I had, and the one I’d built, over-lapping in their differences and sameness, harmonizing (sometimes on-key, sometimes off-key) into a unique and sometimes strange voice.

The song got my attention at a time in my life where I was willing to give the idea of love another chance and to believe in it (again) in my life. I was very open at that time, my heart and my mind.