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Nov. 4th, 2019 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfThis year's money raiser for BBC's Children in Need is a cover album featuring a bunch of actors covering songs personally significant to them. So I guess this is half of an album review?
In general, cover/remix albums are tricky because you have to balance the familiarity of the song but also bring something new/interesting to the table. (For example, I'm not sure a lot of people would say Pitbull's cover of Africa is good, but it certainly has more personality than Weezer's. Ninja Sex Party's cover is my favorite because it strikes that balance well.)
It's actually a great concept for a cover album, precisely because the people singing aren't professional musicians. I mean, they can sing, and rather well, but it's not something they do for a living, and there's a lovely, unaffected quality to it. (Although if you can't make somebody sound good when recording at Abbey Road, you're probably not a very good music producer.)
I also love it because you can tell so much about a person from the song they pick. I know exactly one thing about Himesh Patel (he was in that movie where The Beatles don't exist), but I still get a sense of him by listening to his cover of a Killers song. I'm absolutely not surprised Olivia Colman loves Portishead, and that she's a dark horse at karaoke, according to Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The one that knocked me on my ass though is David Tennant's cover of Sunshine on Leith. It's a perfectly lovely song, but the way he sings it you can tell it means so much to him. It's halfway between a ballad and a hymn, and I legit need to take a moment to emotionally prepare myself or I get overwhelmed with feels.
He didn't have to go that fucking hard for a charity album. Nobody would have batted an eye if he'd picked another Proclaimers song. But he did, and then had the audacity to be like "I hope it sounds OK". Like, dude. You managed to make a 17 year old boy admit it was actually quite lovely (idc if he's your son, a 17 year old boy is a 17 year old boy). That's not a small feat.
Anyways, it's 2019 and I'm still getting upset over David Tennant. Time is a flat circle and everything remains terrible.
In general, cover/remix albums are tricky because you have to balance the familiarity of the song but also bring something new/interesting to the table. (For example, I'm not sure a lot of people would say Pitbull's cover of Africa is good, but it certainly has more personality than Weezer's. Ninja Sex Party's cover is my favorite because it strikes that balance well.)
It's actually a great concept for a cover album, precisely because the people singing aren't professional musicians. I mean, they can sing, and rather well, but it's not something they do for a living, and there's a lovely, unaffected quality to it. (Although if you can't make somebody sound good when recording at Abbey Road, you're probably not a very good music producer.)
I also love it because you can tell so much about a person from the song they pick. I know exactly one thing about Himesh Patel (he was in that movie where The Beatles don't exist), but I still get a sense of him by listening to his cover of a Killers song. I'm absolutely not surprised Olivia Colman loves Portishead, and that she's a dark horse at karaoke, according to Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The one that knocked me on my ass though is David Tennant's cover of Sunshine on Leith. It's a perfectly lovely song, but the way he sings it you can tell it means so much to him. It's halfway between a ballad and a hymn, and I legit need to take a moment to emotionally prepare myself or I get overwhelmed with feels.
He didn't have to go that fucking hard for a charity album. Nobody would have batted an eye if he'd picked another Proclaimers song. But he did, and then had the audacity to be like "I hope it sounds OK". Like, dude. You managed to make a 17 year old boy admit it was actually quite lovely (idc if he's your son, a 17 year old boy is a 17 year old boy). That's not a small feat.
Anyways, it's 2019 and I'm still getting upset over David Tennant. Time is a flat circle and everything remains terrible.
