Eventually, everyone succumbs to the desire to grab an acoustic guitar and illustrate that they, like, really like Elliott Smith. No, no, they know everyone does, but they really do. Generally this occurs sometime during late fall of freshman year, hair pulled beneath an unassuming beanie in the quad, the song whispered into the wee hours when one can hopefully be noticed by people trudging home from the library or the bar—but for others, this sacred ritual occurs after selling many millions of albums over the course of decades, their earnest performance delivered into some sort of night-vision camera and then broadcast out on Twitter for the whole world to see. The world is then required to remark, “Wow—that person really likes Elliott Smith.”
Madonna has performed the song before as part of some sort of not-entirely-successful protest piece against the prison-industrial complex, but this is the truer setting for acoustic Elliott Smith covers. Following this, she will presumably start wearing an ostentatious scarf and carrying around a suspiciously weathered copy of Ham On Rye, and then refusing to come home for Christmas break.