One of the beautiful things about PBS’s Blank on Blank series—aside from its lovely animation—is that it often allows fans the rare opportunity to hear the voice of an icon gone too soon. For its latest, PBS has unearthed a 1998 interview with the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, recorded not long after he performed “Miss Misery” from Good Will Hunting at the Oscars.
In the interview, Smith speaks about disagreeing with people who classify his sound as “folk,” and he gets frank about the struggle to represent in his music the “internal chaos” that comes from dependency—whether it’s on drugs or on other people.
