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Thursday, April 19, 2007
Music Video Stream of Conciousness: Covers
Well, if you're going to create a wholesome, kid friendly band to do covers of your songs, I guess a group like A*Teens isn't a bad solution. To be honest, they're kind of bland, but I don't mind their sound because it's a little lower than the screechingly high soprano voices of Agnetha and Anni-Frid. This song, "Super Trouper" is one of the rare Abba tracks when the boys in A*Teens actually get to sing, even if it's just "su-u-per trou-u-per" in the background. Honestly, if they hadn't written the songs, I don't think there would have been any need for Benny and Bjorn either.
I think I'm one of the few people who actually liked Robbie Williams's album of swing covers. It was just a slight, playful album of stuff that you could tell that Robbie and his sometimes curious choices for duet partners enjoyed themselves immensely making. And while Robbie and Jon Lovitz singing "Did You Ever?" is probably my favorite track, the version of "Somethin' Stupid" with Nicole Kidman is the only video available. Hey, if anything it's not as creepy as Frank and Nancy Sinatra singing the song.
William Shatner should really have never been allowed near a microphone. At least Leonard Nimoy can carry a tune. And it may make me a kill-joy, but the ironic, hipster "love" for Shatner gets on my nerves. I'm also not terribly fond of fan-made music videos, as they're so rarely any damn good whatsover. But this video for "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is very well done, and witty, and I'll even excuse the post-modern irony just this once.
One of my favorite covers techniques is to take a song clearly written for one gender, and have someone of the opposite gender sing it. It may be a bit on the cheap and easy side, but it almost never fails to entertain me. Cake is, not to put too fine a point on it, not a band I like. At all. But they did do a version of "I Will Survive" that I love out of all proportion to it's quality, just because their approach to the song, with a male singer and a kind of lethargic delivery, really let the lyrics stand out for me.