Never liked Eminem all that much and Dublin band The Script haven’t done much to improve “Lose Yourself”, that one went straight to the recycle bin.
For all her faults the success of Amy Winehouse has allowed a flood of deeper-voiced smokey singers like Adele a chance to to heard and here she doesn’t bother with covering other people’s songs instead she shows off her talented voice on “Chasing Pavements”
Side 2 has a lot less covers so there’s less chance for me to be mean and horrible about people’s attempts to cover songs. I know, I was a bit disapointed too but they filled the non-cover slots with some good songs like Elbow’s “One Day LIke This”, Lupe Fiasco’s “Superstar” and Athlete’s “Wires” so it’s harder to complain.
The next of our non-originals is The Guillemots version of “Black & Gold” which is fine, but more interestingly originally by Sam Sparro who I wasn’t too excited about yetesterday, yet another original I haven’t heard which seems to be the case for most of the songs on Disc 2 so comparisons might be difficult…
I think Ironik would have drawn my ire purely because of how he spelled his name but listening to his rapping added a new level of dislike, there’s this lovely woman singing and then this guy goes and ruins it.
I haven’t heard any Kate Nash songs or any Arctic Monkey’s either but I do like Kate Nash’s “Flouresent Adolesent”. And Goldfrapp’s version of The Klaxon’s “It’s Not Over Yet” is just wonderful.
Sometimes the best covers are done when a “serious” band does version of a “pop” song, I think the Zutons achieve this with the laid back version of Christine Aguilera’s “Beautiful”, though I think the challenge of doing an Usher song was insurmountable for The Automatic…
I heard Bat For Lashes do a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” on Dermot O’Leary’s Saturday Sessions album and it was really wonderful. I listened to some of her non-cover stuff on MySpace and it didn’t excite me as much so I wasn’t sure what to expect of what she’d do with another 80’s song. I’m not sure how much she adds to the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” but she sings it well.
Ne-Yo’s “Closer” is not a cover but it sounds like it is, it sounds like it should be from the 70s or 80s and sung by someone like George Benson, yes, it’s that anachronistic, doesn’t fit into the rest of the album at all!
Yesterday when I said I had never heard the heard the original of “American Boy” I’d forgotten that it’s at the end of Disc Two and what’s interesting is that it too is as anachronistic as Ne-Yo, is this the way music is going?
