Singer-songwriter Eric Hirshberg’s debut album Spare Room is out today through Beautiful Corner/UMG. In addition, he also shares a video of his cover of The Cars hit song “Drive” which is also on Spare Room.
Hirshberg says of “Drive”: “I have always loved The Cars, and of course ‘Drive’ is one of their most iconic songs. But I have always felt that the polished, 80s production of the original somewhat obscured the raw intensity of the lyrics. I love it when a cover can reveal something new about a song you know and love and I thought there was an opportunity to do that with ‘Drive.’ This is a song about addiction and the impact that has on relationships. Someone is hitting bottom, and their partner is walking away. It's dark. I wanted to strip the song down to its essence so that darkness and intensity had nowhere to hide.”
Spare Room is an unapologetically adult album, with themes of marriage, fatherhood, death and aging, along with some political songs including an earlier released “(Keep Mar-A-Lago) I Want America Back” which has been viewed over a million times on Youtube and been reposted by people like Andrew Yang, Norman Lear, and General Barry McCaffrey (none of these people who Hirshberg knows personally). For Spare Room, Hirshberg worked with producer John Alagi known for his work with Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Lukas Nelson, and Paul Simon.
Hirshberg who has been writing songs non-stop since the age of 14, took an unusual path to release the debut LP. He spent his college days and most of his 20s playing Los Angeles clubs with his band and trying to build a music career. And while he wasn't looking, a whole other career took over; Hirshberg had a remarkably successful run as a creative executive first in advertising, then in video games, ultimately becoming the CEO of Activision, a post he held for almost a decade. (He is one of the only people ever to become a CEO of a company of that scale to have an art degree.) Over the years, the demands of his life and career drove his music more and more into the background of his life, carefully hidden from public view, but his passion and output as a songwriter never diminished. Spare Room has been decades in the making.
