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
You know that song on the Vampire Weekend album that namechecks Peter Gabriel? Well, in a development that was almost inevitable once the Brooklyn prepsters became popular, Mr WOMAD has gone and covered the song, with the help of Hot Chip. They are such kindly laddies, helping out an old man.
Mr Gabriel makes reference to the weirdness of singing his own name in the song, and as you’d expect the track has a more expansive sound than the original. But is it better? Hmmm, not in my opinion. But don’t take MY word for it - listen yourself below. What think you?
I’ve been attempting to get people into baldybeardy indie heroes Built To Spill for approximately eight years now, with not a whole lotta successa. You know what people are like.
Anyway, I’m on a bit of a Built To Spill tip at the mo because next week I’ll be going to see them perform their ‘mazin’ album Perfect From Now On at London’s KOKO.
So I was intruigedamundo to see that on stage in Italy last week they did a wee cover of M.I.A’s “Paper Planes”. Now, admittedly this particular track, while splendid, has been overexposed recently. So I promise that this is the last time I will write anything to do with it. No promises, though.
See the vidisnippet after the jump… Wonder if they’ll tackle it again in London?
“When You Were Mine” is one of my favourite Prince songs. It’s one of those tunes that you can dance to, but which has sad lyrics. I love that dichotomy, even if it does mean I tend to end up shaking my thang while bawling my stupid eyes out. Bouncers rarely allow me to explain.
When Crooked Fingers covered the track, they stripped the track back to some plucked banjo, a wounded voice and not much else. If you have a heart, it will probably be a big melted goo of bloody muscle lying in your stomach by the time you’ve listened to this. In a good way!
See what I mean over the page.
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