Listen to Your Heart is a clubby dance song, with pulsing synths, autotuned vocals, and a piano outdo. It’s like a muscular and relentless steamroller. It’s fun and ridiculous.
The original version, by Roxette, is a pop ballad. It’s really sedate by comparison.
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(Nothing But) Flowers is a relatively straight cover of the Talking Heads tune, with nice world music instrumentation. It’s about, well, someone who finds themselves in a bucolic and pastoral setting, and misses technology. “If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower.”
the boy in the bubble is a catchy electro song. It’s a cover of the Paul Simon tune, which video has some very 80’s computer animation.
Physical is a dirge-like dance / noise cover of the Olivia Newton-John pop song. I like the subterranean baseline.
Don’t Stop Kazooin’ is a gleeful kazoo quartet cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” I love cortex’s happily lofi covers, can you tell? Tomorrow will be different.
You Got It is a raucous bluegrass Roy Orbison cover.
Axel F cover sorta is more of a remix of the theme to Beverly Hills Cop, by Harold Faltermeyer, full of staccato keyboard playing. It’s an upbeat and bouncy synthpop song.
Where Is My Mind is a cool little garage rock cover of the Pixies tune, with a theremin wailing away and rockstar guitars.
Road To Nowhere is an a cappella cover of the classic New Wave song by Talking Heads. All of the layers, instruments included, are based on waraw’s vocals.
This Woman’s Work (remix) is a synthy dance remix of Kate Bush. It’s CarrotAdventure’s second Kate Bush remix here.
We Close Our Eyes is a pretty well-done one-man indie pop cover of an Oingo Boingo song.
Edit, 2013-10-05 – Whoops, attached the mp3, finally.
Unrecognisable-lullejah is just, you know, this classical guitar piece.
Okay, yeah, maybe it continues Hallelujah Week.
Hallelujah! (So Very NSFW Mix) has first-rate music – a choir! an organ! – and really, really sexual lyrics.
This concludes Hallelujah Week. Probably.
Edit: Whoops, I forgot to attach the MP3. Fixed!
Halle Hula is a hula-flavored cover of Hallelujah, just ukelele and singing and *so much* joy.
Skallelujah is a ska cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
There was a Mefi Music Challenge to cover this song, inspired by Hallelukulelejah (previously on the podcast). I’ll try to not go overboard with it, but I can’t make any promises.
Hallelukulelejah is a cover of “Hallelujah,” originally by Leonard Cohen and popularized by Jeff Buckley. It’s a great song, covered many, many times. In fact, covering this became the next Music Challenge after this posting – you’ll hear some of the results here in a month or so.
So I have some good news and some bad news. And then a bit more good news. Like a sandwich. Anyway.
The good news is, Celine Dion isn’t well-represented in My Heart Will Give You Up. Just in the intro.
The bad news is, Rick Astley is around.
There’s more good news. It’s well done, with The White Hat’s vocals and skills at banjo, guitar, and harmonica making what could be just a goofy song, sort of good and epic (although yes, still deeply silly). And, I don’t think there’s any more rickrolling on the horizon here, though I won’t make promises.
O Superman is a non-electronic and mostly acoustic cover of the experimental Laurie Anderson song. This is fairly unusual and experimental in its own right.
There’s a story behind Runnin’ With The Songsmith. Microsoft released Songsmith, software that would take vocals and make up backing music, with frequently unintentionally hilarious results. mrzarquon put it together with the lead vocals from Van Halen’s “Runnin’ with the Devil.” The result is amazingly shambolic and hilarious, though it bears little relation to what humans refer to as “music.” It received attention from outside the site, like from Gizmodo, Stereogum, and the New York Times.
The sliding whistle gets me every time.
I’ll Stab You (for Sumru) is a parody of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You,” with lyrics about a specific game of Diplomacy. If you haven’t heard of it, Diplomacy is a board war game of intense scheming and two-faced political alliance-building and backstabbing. The game seems smart and challenging and highly recommended, with some really big caveats.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The song is a decent mimickry of an earnest song, with a piano and nice synth strings in the background.
Little Red Corvette is a fun rockabilly cover of the Prince song.
Go Gadget, Go! is an instrumental, upbeat, and jazzy cover of the Inspector Gadget theme song, which is in turn inspired by Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”
Here comes your man is ORthey’s cover of the classic Pixies tune, as an acoustic folky tune with some adroit guitar fingerpicking.
Edit: Oops, I didn’t include the MP3. I’ll say this is the post for today and tomorrow.
Canção de amor is micayetoca’s cover of The Cure’s “Lovesong,” in Portuguese. It’s a gothic love ballad, and this is a bit stripped-down and lovely.
There were a lot of covers in November 2008, thanks to threads that spawned a sorta-unofficial Music Challenge. More of those will be coming up!
Into the Night is a cheesy synthpop cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now,” originally done by Tommy James & the Shondells (1967) and covered by Tiffany (1987).
Take On Me (a cappella cover) is not faithful to the original, but it’s hilarious & really entertaining.
I’ll call those off-kilter covers.
When I Was A Baby is a lovely & simple folk cover with fairly bizarre lyrics. It’s originally from The Donner Party, which has a calliope running beneath it, and The New Pornographers based an upbeat, cheerful rock song on it.
rabo de nube is a lovely, very mellow cover of a song by Silvio Rodríguez.