Top ten download song, "99 and 9 Tenths Fine," has always been a big face amongst my female fans, who number well into the tens. Not really, but I tend to be a more guy-centric artist. Like Rush, when I see chicks in the audience, I think, "How nice of her to agree to go with her boyfriend to my show!"

Anyway it's a good love song, written for Helvetica Bold, sort of. Not that it's written for anybody else at all, but it's a fairly general love song and it's not like there's anything in it that makes me go, "Oh that is so HER and nobody else." More like one of those love songs where the songwriter writes it, sees it's a love song, looks around to see who he's in love with, and says to her, "This is for you!" And hopefully she's touched by it, and not doubtful, or nonplussed. I don't remember a terribly positive response to this song from her at the time, but I don't recall a negative, either. She might have learned by then to not give her opinions candidly about my new songs, which I tend to be good at teaching.

The ending coda bothers me slightly due to its passing similarity to James Taylor's "Carolina in my Mind." It's a very Tayloresque song, though. Not surprising as he was one of my earliest influences. I was listening to the "Mud Slide Slim" album in second grade and diggin' it.