The other day, when I checked to see what I'd bookmarked for the next music post and found hardly anything there, I was a little bit disappointed in myself for not having made more of an effort. Since then I've put in the time to restock.
I've also changed the way I record these things so I can find the new stuff
more easily and I'm happy to say I now have more than fifty songs from over
forty different artists to pick from. It's too many. I just can't win!
Last time, when I was digging out quality covers of Smiths' songs, one of the highlights was t.A.T.u's version of How Soon Is Now? Inevitably, that brought up a whole bunch of t.A.T.u related YouTube links, including an astonishing number of covers of the faux-lesbian duo's signature hit, All The Things She Said.
When that track first appeared back in the 'nineties, it was widely seen as
inauthentic and exploitative, both of which it undoubtedly is, but over the
years most of the controversy and contempt has sloughed away, leaving a
surprising legacy of affection for a ferociously powerful song that stands as
an unlikely, if arguably ironic, testament to loyalty, commitment and
individuality. It even has
its own lengthy Wikipedia entry.
Olivia Rodrigo includes a storming version in her live set as does Poppy, who certainly knows a few things about both controversy and artifice. Both of them stick very close to the original pop-rock arrangement but there are plenty of covers that take the song to some very different places.
As a rule, I'm wary of offering up multiple takes on the same tune. I might find it fascinating to compare different approaches to songs I like but I realise it's a bit much to ask other people to sit through several renditions of something they may neither know nor enjoy, just to see how different performers handle it.
But it's my blog so I'm going to do it anyway! And what's more, I'm going to
do it in French!
All The Things She Said - Eugénie
The autotuned, multi-tracked vocals bleach out most of the emotion and all of the hysteria - everything that made the original so chaotic and desperate - leaving just a cool, dry, husk. The electronic drum patterns skitter, while the change of language between chorus and verse adds a sense of alienation. The whole affair seems brittle, on the verge of shattering. It's like elevator music from the far future. That's a good thing.
All The Things She Said - Myu-Chan (feat. Yamii-1995)
Credited as a cover of t.A.T.u/Seraphine, making it a cover of a cover. Here's the Seraphine version. Not being a League of Legends player, I had no idea who Seraphine was. I still don't, really, or why Riot thought this was an appropriate song for the "starry-eyed songstress".
Myu-Chan is a VTuber, a term I'd heard but hadn't bothered to investigate until now. According to Wikipedia, a VTuber is "an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics". Apparently this is a big thing now and also some kind of threat to the natural order at least according to some people. Not sure I see it, myself.
All The Things She Said - Abbey Glover
If all that technology's doing your head in, how about this? A girl, her bathtub and a uke. How much more simple could you want it? Okay, there's a bit of double-tracking on the vocals so it's not quite the spontaneous singalong it seems at first but it's real, alright.
Abbey Glover doesn't have a Wikipedia entry but she does have 1.13m YouTube followers and a listing on infofamouspeople.com, which is a lot less impressive than it sounds, as you'll discover if you follow the link. She certainly has a way with a cover. Her original songs are pretty good too, if not exactly a barrel of laughs. She looks a little bit like a suicide girl but she's still here and long may that continue.
Okay, I seem to be going a little link-crazy. Time to get this train back on the tracks. The only problem with that is having fifty songs to choose from makes it hard to know where to go next. Do I lean into the mood of bleak despair or try break out of it as fast as I can?
By Your Side - Girl and Her Bad Mood
Or maybe both at once. Another of Indonesia's seemingly inexhaustible supply of weirdly-named, ultra-melodic indie bands, many of whom seem deep in thrall to the likes of Camera Obscura and Allo Darlin'. It's a bittersweet sound that often conceals melancholy under layers of rippling guitar and rich melody but we're not fooled, are we?
Sasquatch .22 - Bay Faction
I guess I ought to make it clear that nothing we've seen so far today is new. Which is fine. The strand's called Music I've Been Listening To Lately and I've been mostly following links. This is where it's led me: into the past.
Bay Faction are supposedly an emo band although this doesn't really
sound like emo to me. Then again, what do I know? And then again, again, what
even is emo? I remember spending hours talking about the genre with a
guy I worked with, who was a self-proclaimed emo obsessive. It must have been
at least fifteen years ago and even then he was telling me about the
second wave of emo, which apparently rolled in years after the first and
sounded nothing like it. God only knows how many variants there must be by
now.
Good song, anyway. There's an even bleaker
acoustic version
if you'd like to be even more depressed.
Light Blue Sheets - Strawberry Launch
Ok, enough of the gloom. Let's open the blinds and let some sunshine in. This is so 'nineties it might as well be a time machine. Yet another tip from Jarret Wolfson's channel and not even the last in this post.
In fact, let's have another right now!
Fuck The DMV - Tea Eater
Fifty-three seconds! That's what I call a song. The
studio take
is ten seconds longer and a bit more pop-punk. They also have a song called
I'm Starting A Podcast, which makes me wonder if they just write about whatever happened to them
that day.
Teeth - Speed of Light
I really thought Starcrawler were going to be huge. Doesn't seem to
have happened. This lot have a slightly similar vibe with the hair-flailing
pretty-boy guitarist and the in-your-face female vocals, although obviously
no-one's going to match Arrow and Henri for either looks or
craziness.
Straight-up rock hasn't been my thing for a long, long time but I do sometimes like it when the genres bleed into one another. I'd call this rock but I bet most rock fans wouldn't. They'd probably say it was punk, which it most definitely is not.Then again, I'm unreasonably obsessed with genre stratifications. (Is it even possible to be reasonably obsessed?)
At this point I seriously considered including a couple of ten-minute videos
by
Ex-Girl
and
Melt Banana to make some kind of point but I think I'll save them for a special.
You'll thank then, I'm sure, although probably not as fervently as you're
thanking me now for leaving them out.
Enough with the rock and roll. Time to get back to something more comfortable.
To quote katie, who clearly doesn't have a caps lock to call her own,
"aren’t you tired of being nice ? i wanna start a fight"
If Only (feat. katie dey) - June Jones
Which brings us to this.
"I don’t wanna go to work today So meet me in the video game Video game,
the video game I designed my character to be mostly true But she knows what
she’s supposed to do And she wants for more than to be close to you To be
close to you, be close to you But no matter how hard I try I can never
really be her I own fewer human-sized swords and I miss you more than
ever"
A bit too close to home?
So many tunes to pick from
but that's ten already. Just a few more I suppose and save the rest for next
time.
ANNIE, PICK A FLOWER - Saya Gray Aha! That's where katie's caps lock went!
Also known as...
ANNIE, I SING FOR... - Saya Gray
Starts out prog then swerves into something that's almost psychedelic soul. I think it's a version of the same song but I'm not entirely sure...
updown - piri, Tommy Villiers
I'm subbed to TripleJ and they uploaded a full thirty minute live set by piri, which was my introduction. She opens by telling the Aussie crowd "I'm piri and this is UK garage" so I guess we won't be debating the genre for once.
I can take any amount of this stuff, I'm just warning you.
And finally....
Stick Season (Noah Kahan cover) - Olivia Rodrigo
Radio One's Live Lounge is doing a new season of feature performances and everyone gets to cover something as well as showcase whatever they're trying to promote right now. Now that TripleJ's Like A Version strand seems to have staled a little, it makes for a welcome addition to the covers pipeline. Expect more - if they're as good as this.
And with that we come to the end of another post. One of the more challenging I've done in a while, I think. Not sure if I'm happy with it but it's too late to do much about it now.
And anyway, there'll be another along soon enough. I'll see if I can't make
that one a bit more coherent.
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