Caught this on one of the music channels the other day:
The mind goes all a-boggle when it considers how many middle-aged INXS fans’ mouths are currently frothing into Michael Hutchence cushion covers.
The thing is, as a chartbound reappropriation of one of INXS’s finest moments, it’s not actually that bad. It’s not going to appeal to anyone who owns a Kick t-shirt, obvs, but it recognises that there’s no point trying to reinterpret or reproduce that riff - you might as well just nick it wholesale. Because it is one of the bestest riffs of the last 25 years, and anyone who scoffs and goes off on a rant about how shit INXS were (are?) is a toolbag.
The song, as well, is a brilliant, sleazy, urgent, priapic kind of thing; and to me, somehow, despite lyrics that allude to the contrary, it manages not to stray into the turf marked “predatory”. I think the main reason for this is that in Michael Hutchence INXS had a frontman who, for all his pleads about needing “you”, and about being thrown into a perspirational tizzy by “you, girl”, would clearly have much rather spent a night boning himself, were it physically possible.
It’s hard to pick out the single most irritating element of this cover version of “Don’t Stop The Music”, but the one at the forefront of my mind at the time of writing is that there will almost certainly be people out there who would have turned the radio off when Rihanna’s original came on, but will turn up the volume on Mr Cullum’s version.
She’s a pop puppet, you see, while Jamie is a “talented” “musician”.
BALLS.
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Tuesday January 19th, 2010 at
9:00 am
I hope that if I ever have a children, and a rather up-and-down movie career, I’ll do a better job than John Travolta when the inevitable father/daughter movie tie-in cover of Bobby Brown comes a-knocking.
I’ll never better the centre-parted plugs or wacky madcap antics that clearly take place in Old Dogs, though. At the time of writing the movie is sitting pretty atop a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so at least the amount of damage this ickyvid can do is pretty limited.
“Ella Bleu” sounds a bit like “Hella Bleurgh”, doesn’t it? :(
I know, I know. You could quite happily live the rest of your miserable life without hearing Duffy’s “Mercy” ever again. And I know, I know, Mark Ronson has taken 60s soul-style production and made it yawnsomely ubiquitous.
But there’s something about The Third Degree’s cover of “Mercy” that has the ability to silence that over-analytical part of one’s brain. It gives a glimpse of what Duffy could have sounded like with a slightly rougher edge. She’d almost certainly be worse off financially, mind you.
Katy Perry’s “Hot N’ Cold” was one of the best pop singles of 2008, but it did lack a Cossack-flavoured accordian. These nice men have remedied that, and if you listen to their version you will almost certainly come out the other side with a big dumb smile on your face. Ahhh.
The reason Adam Sandler has covered Neil Young is that, apparently, Warner Bros are releasing an album of their artists covering songs from their catalogue.
This isn’t tooooo bad until you get to 4.00, at which point it all goes a bit karaoke. As The Onion remarks, “thankfully, the song won the fight–it’s very resilient.”
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Thursday February 12th, 2009 at
10:00 am
Believe it or not, despite being a passionate music fan, I am not one of those bores who will grumble on about songs being “sacred” and untouchable. If you think you can cover a classic song and give it a decent twist, good luck to you. There are plenty of other folk out there willing to roast you just for considering the idea.
The point at which I start vomming word-bile is if the cover is an insipid, life-draining piece of shit. As is the case with The Attic Lights’ rendering of “I Could Be So Could For You”, which they have recorded to soundtrack the new version of Minder (starts on Five at 9pm tonight, viewers!).
Not many bands could cover Joy Division without risking the goodwill they’ve accrued, but Hot Chip are more or less the best thing in modern music, so this is fine. Really, it’s fine.
Part of the forthcoming War Child Heroes album, ver Chip’s cover of ver Division’s “Transmission” incorporates steel drums and that weird effect where it sounds like someone is singing underwater what is that called I don’t know answers on a postcard, etc.
Give it a listen after the jump, where I shall also kindly place the tracklisting of Heroes, which features Beck, Duffy, Elbow, Scissor Sisters and many more familiar names.
Oh Popjustice. Yesterday they said this:
And then, within a couple of hours, they said this on MySpace (click to enlarge):
So, now you can go here and listen to their version. It will make you weep tears of something or other, and so on.
Do you know what all this “Hallelujah” nonsense really means? It means that at this time of year MUSIC DIES and we are left with nothing interesting to talk about. Srsly.
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Friday December 19th, 2008 at
10:35 am
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