Hear Arthur Russell’s Previously Unreleased “You Did It Yourself”
The legendary cellist, composer, and avant-garde pop musician Arthur Russell died in 1992 of complications from HIV-AIDS. He left behind hundreds and hundreds of tapes of unreleased music and lyrics, and although he never achieved popular success during his own lifetime, his star has only continued to rise in the past decade as more and more of his influential work comes to light. And now, we’re getting to hear some more of it.
Next month, Russell’s partner Tom Lee and Audika Records’ Russell archivist Steve Knutson are giving us Iowa Dream, a new collection of 19 genre-spanning tracks from the Iowa-born, New York-based icon. Russell famously left many of his songs unfinished, and musician Peter Broderick worked with Audika to complete them, performing audio restoration and additional mixing.
Today, we’re finally getting to hear a studio recording of “You Did It Yourself,” a stunningly great song that until now could previously only be heard as a brief live performance in Matt Wolf’s 2008 documentary Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell. Listen below.
Iowa Dream is out 11/15 via Audika Records. Pre-order it here.