I waited for hours for this I’ve made myself so sick I wish I stayed Asleep today
I never thought this day would end I never thought tonight could ever be This close to me…
Why?’s cover of The Cure’s “Close to Me” is one of the saddest and prettiest things in the world. I am not kidding. Clear the next four minutes, put in some earphones, turn off the lights and listen to this.
They make it magisterial, melancholy—my two favorite descriptors for music! Also Stuart Staples sounds more natural singing “crotch mavens” than Malkmus does; he sings “crotch mavens” as if he knows what it means.
Today I drove past the high school while it was letting out, and my windows were down because this is the most pleasant springtime I’ve ever lived, and some kids got stinkface when they heard this chamber music spilling out of my car, so I pulled over and explained to them that this cover is CULTURALLY SUBVERSIVE.
A lovely cover of a lovely song.
Huh. So, Florence & the Machine (who I do not, as it were, like very much at all) covered what could well be my favourite song of 2011. And you know what? It’s good! Avoiding the awkwardness that would come with Oh My Florence Welch is rapping, she instead BELTS out the Drake sections while matching Rihanna’s sad, slight delivery on the hook and it all just works. It’s a totally nice cover of an amazing song. And that Florence Welch did it. What a crazy fucking world we live in.
Take Care (Drake Cover) by Florence and the Machine
WHATEVER YOU LIKE (T.I. COVER) - Joan As Police Woman
I always wish I could hear Joan’s vocal over the (phenomenal) original Jim Jonsin* instrumental. But let’s be honesty: I love Whatever You Like in any form.
*I was CERTAIN this was a DJ Toomp beat. And turns out Live Your Life is by Just Blaize. Paper Trail is full of fantastic music, and evidently none of it is by who I thought it was by. Thank you for your time.
We hit 10k facebook fans! I can’t thank you enough, this is seriously crazy. I decided to do something special for you all. First, a little backstory:
Many many years ago my buddy Filipe gave me a burnt cd with this file on it. It was this new thing called mp3 and apparently it was the future. I happily installed winamp (2.9 for lyfe) and listened to this particular song on repeat. It’s all I had. That might not mean much, but it was just the start of what became my musical journey. I obviously liked music before that, but access was always a serious barrier. Napster came along and suddenly I had access to a lot more (On a 56k connection). A lot of people whine and whine about piracy but forget about the obvious benefit. I’m able to do music for a living today because mp3’s opened the door for independent music. It leveled the playing field. People are far more musically educated today than they were 10 years ago. It seriously educated me. There’s still a lot of horrible music today, but at least you know about the good stuff.
The song was 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. I figured it would be cool to do a cover. It had been a while since I did a track with my wife, so this seemed like a great opportunity for that. We tried to keep it relatively close to the original but definitely putting our own spin on it.
I really hope you like it.
Thank you thank you thank you!
Short version: Totally adorable husband and wife electronic pop cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ excellent 1979.
One of the all time great covers, is Owen’s take on Fantasy. It would be nice if he ever recorded it but I can understand his not doing so. The one time I saw him he played this last or second to last and it was AWESOME.
I’ve ranted before (and will no doubt rant again) about kids with acoustic guitars doing terrible covers of hip-hop songs. Usually it’s a painful excercise in which the annoying guitar-weilder acts as though they’ve dug some important truth up out of what we all assumed was “just” a popular rap song! Which is idiotic and painful on so many levels - hip-hop doesn’t need you to prove that “like, there’s a great song in there”, those of us with ears already know, dumb ass.
With all that said - here is a band I love covering one of my favourite Kanye tracks, and doing a decent job of it. It’s not as good as the original, but it’s kinda fun and it seems like they’re just having a good time and playing a song they like. I hope.
Can’t Tell Me Nothing (Kanye West Cover) by Taking Back Sunday
