Covered: Selections From Radio 1's Live Lounge

The latest volume of the BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge series came out in the UK last week. As usual, there are hits and misses, with many of the better covers left out in favor of more established names. The idea of Live Lounge covers don't excite me that much anymore, to be honest, most artists just picked a current top hit and performed it acoustically while sounding bored and joyless. It has somewhat become obligatory buzz-generating promo chore. Fortunately, some still try to have fun and bring something new to their renditions. Here are my recent favorites.


Florence & The Machine - Halo (Beyoncé Cover)
The Noisettes - When You Were Young (The Killers Cover)
(available on Volume 4)

Basement Jaxx - New In Town (Little Boots Cover)
La Roux - Farewell To The Fairground (White Lies Cover)
Athlete - Bulletproof (La Roux Cover)


I've got a string of more cover posts drafted, so watch this space...

Covers For The Weekend

I'm still mourning over the departure of Riotbecki & Rosay from The Pipettes. Funny how two of my top artists in '06 both resurfaced in the news this week, one leaked 2 brilliant demos on her MySpace, and one announced the most unexpected lineup change. On the bright side, a new Pipettes album is in the works, and I have two more solo outputs to look out for. It's gonna take me a while to get used to The Pipettes version 3.0, though, sigh.


Anyways, as usual, here are 5 fantastic covers, for the weekend. Collect them all.



Grovesnor - With Every Heartbeat (Robyn Cover)
The Puppini Sisters - Crazy In Love (Beyoncé Cover - The Real Tuesday Weld Remix)
The Tough Alliance - Lucky (Lucky Twice Cover)
Beachwood Sparks - By Your Side (Sade Cover)
Ben Barnett & Ben Gibbard - Joga (Bjork Cover)

Covered: The Genuine Fakes Covers Beyoncé & Skye Covers Gorillaz

Okay, I am kinda in a hurry so I'll make it quick. Here are two excellent covers I've recently discovered.

The Genuine Fakes is a Stockholm-based trio that plays powerpop, according to their MySpace. They just did a cover of 'Irreplaceable' by Beyoncé, and if I can describe it effectively in just one word, that word is: jangly. Haven't checked out their own stuff, but what I just listened to is really nice. (Thanks to It's A Trap for the tips!)

The Genuine Fakes - Irreplaceable (Beyoncé Cover)

Visit The Genuine Fakes' MySpace


I posted a clip of Skye Edwards performing 'Feel Good Inc.' by Gorillaz acoustically for KCRW a while ago, but I wasn't aware that there's a new version available on her MySpace until yesterday. It sounds exactly like what one would expect from her: mellow and honeycoated, overall total ear candy. She's very lucky to possess such a pristine, enthereal voice. Morcheeba is just shit without her.

Skye - Feel Good Inc. (Gorillaz Cover)

Visit Skye's MySpace

Covers from Novi Split, Matt Pond PA & Astrid Swan

I notice that as the poll suggests, you guys really love covers. So here are three nice covers to help you get through the day. They should be able to put a smile on your face.

Novi Split - Crazy In Love (Beyonce Cover)
An indie-pop cover version. This song just keeps giving. Can be found on his 2007 album 'Pink In The Sink'.

Matt Pond PA - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel Cover)
Found this surpisingly pleasant cover the other day. What they did is rounding the edges of the original and make it sound more accessible (or adult-contemporary-station-friendly). Hear this, and then go hug someone. From Winter Days EP, 2005.

Astrid Swan - When You Were Young (The Killers Cover)
Finnish songstress' acoustic live take of The Killers' hit. I think she did a quite good job.

Awesomely Remixed: Feist, Beck & Beyoncé

A new round of banging remixes coming atcha.

FEIST:

Feist - My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Remix)

First up, here's a cool Boys Noize Remix of Feist's awesome new single 'My Moon, My Man'. It's the first dancefloor-friendly remix of her, though it can do without the slightly cheesy computerized voice repeating the vocals. Good news is Feist recently wrapped up the video shoots for both '1 2 3 4' and 'My Moon My Man'. The latter was directed by Patrick Daughters (the man behind the Mushaboom video), shot at an airport and involved choreography with dancers in flight attendant uniforms! Sounds like her most interesting video yet!

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BECK:

The Deluxe Edition of Beck's 'The Information' contains some really interesting bonus remixes. He's got all the cool people, blogger-favorites like Ellen Allien, TV On The Radio...to reconstruct his songs. Here I choose two that grab my attention most.

Beck - Cellphone's Dead (Ellen Allien Remix)
Beck - Nausea (Pirate's Bumblebeez Remix)

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BEYONCÉ/FREEMASONS:

Beyoncé + Freemasons = dancefloor heaven. That is inevitable. They have collaborated for 3 times now, and all of which results in storming, funky, groovy club anthems that can hit the 8 minute mark and still you can't get enough of it. The best one out of the three is the Deja Vu remix, which is so ace that even the Grammy had to take note and get it nominated for best remix. The other two followed like a trilogy. For a genre that I rarely had interest in, Freemasons really did it good.


Beyoncé - Deja Vu (Freemasons Club Mix)
Beyoncé - Ring The Alarm (Freemasons Club Mix)
Beyoncé and Shakira - Beautiful Liar(Freemasons Radio Vox) (3-minute radio edit)

Awesomely Remixed

Another round of great new remixes I listened to lately. This wouldn't have been possible if not for the great music blogs I frequently visited, so props to them.

Amy Winehouse - Rehab (Eagle Desert Remix)
This new remix is hot! I imagine I would sound great blasting out of a car stereo. And Universal gives it away for free. So all's good.

Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches (Trentemoller Remix)
At last, a dance remix to such a fun song! It's nothing to special, but you see trendy remixer Trentemoller's name on it, so if you like his work, don't miss this one.

The Killers - Read My Mind (Pet Shop Boys Stars Are Blazing Mix)
Wow, good job. It runs for 7 minutes but feels like a 3 minutes. Maybe Pet Shop Boys should produce The Killers' next album, no?

Beyoncé - Imprescindible (Rudy Perez Nortena Remix)
Okay, another remix for 'Irreplaceable', but this time around it's the most interesting so far, with a Caribbean, ska-lite flavor, and the vocals are the Spanish version. Save it for the summer. It's supposed to be included in the 'Deluxe Version' of B'day.

Stefski - Say It Again (courtesy of Pitchfork)
A pretty odd, electro synth-heavy remix of Nelly Furtado's megahit 'Say It Right' by Swedish DJ Stefski. It's got renamed to 'Say It Again'.

Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race (Kanye West Remix)
I didn't expect this to turn out great. But it did. Kanye lent the boys a pumping beat and a coll rapping verse, beginning with 'I don't know what the hell this song's about'. Well, me too, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying it. So nowadays even Kanye & Jay Z consider emo cool. Such a time we're living in.

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And now, the more left-field ones for the indie hipsters:

The Postmarks - Goodbye (James Iha Remix)
Their self-titled debut is an early contender for my 2007 favorites. The Postmarks makes delightful female-vocal dreampop, and this remix for the single added a nice upbeat electronic touch to an already beautiful song. I'll get back to them at another time.

My Brightest Diamond - Golden Star (Alias Remix)
My Brightest Diamond's music seems a little distant to me, but maybe what I need is a good remix like this one. Trip-hoppy with blips and bleeps. From her new remix album 'Tear It Down'.

Junior Boys - In The Morning (Hot Chip Remix)

From their new EP Dead Horse. It's more like a cover actually with added vocals from Hot Chip. If you're fan of Hot Chip and/or Junior Boys, this is a must-hear, but if you don't know much about them, think it through before clicking the mouse. It's almost 10 minutes.

Covers: When Rockers Tried To Be Funny And Failed Miserably

The idea of an 'ironic' cover is though it's not to be taken seriously, the band has fun covering it and somehow makes it sounds fun and enjoyable, too. These rocker dudes simply just don't get it.


To be fair, their first two singles were at least listenable back when they were not overplayed to death, though I have no intention of checking out the whole album. But this Live Lounge cover, it's dreadful. Somehow, the lead singer succeeded in making it sound miserable. He seemed to try so hard to be funny I almost felt sorry for him. It's just totally unnecessary. For curiousity, you may take a listen but don't say I didn't warn you.

Switchfoot - Crazy In Love (Beyoncé Cover)
Whereas The Magic Numbers and Snow Patrol did a wonderful job on covering this, Switchfoot successfully ruined it. Totally boring & pointless. They didn't even try to make it sound interesting or anything. If you can make it to the end of the song, then bravo. And they did it for Yahoo! Music.
The real question here is: was there a Christian message among the lyrics of 'Crazy In Love'? There must be, otherwise they would not choose it, right?

Sights & Sounds: Beyoncé's Double Treats

Beyoncé's desperate. 'B'Day' didn't quite make an impact on critics and fans alike like expected, and although it's already certified 2x platinum, it's only halfway as much as 'Dangerously In Love'. Her supposed movie breakthrough ended up nowhere as Jennifer Hudson got all the spotlight/awards. Obviously, the sole purpose of a rerelease is because there's no more hitworthy materials, so new songs and bonus stuff need to be added to attract the record-buying public.
And for the rerelease of 'B'Day', Beyoncé works real hard. She has shot videos for every single track on the album. She even came to label mate Shakira for help in form of a Stargate-produced collaboration, and the music video made its way on music channels this week.

Beautiful Liar (dir: Jake Nava)

I was so excited when I knew Jake Nava was gonna work with her again. He's a brilliant pop music video director, without him, there's no 'Crazy In Love', 'Baby Boy' and 'Naughty Girl'. As I expected, the video's full of glossy, stylized eye candy. However, it could have been much better. Jake has never been much of a studio person, he's at his best when shooting on location. I assumed that because she was shooting a plethora of music videos, the label cut down on the budget, so the set designs looked poor and unimaginative. Imagine if they were really walking in a bamboo forest, or belly dancing in a real ancient cave. Anyway, the wildflowers-on-steel-pole scenes were cool and the sexy, sizzling Arabic dance routine at the end (which is also like a game of who's who!) is sexy as hell. Musically, at first the song didn't sound so impressive to me but now I think it's slowly making its way into my head. Did I mention they both look flawlessly gorgeous?

Download the video for Beautiful Liar in AVI format.

Upgrade U (Feat. Jay Z) (dir: Melina/Beyoncé)

Premiered the same day as 'Beautiful Liar'. This is a cliché-ridden one, with blinding blings, product placements, and flashy shots. Though the song's not remarkable to me (though being a Swiss Beatz production), the video should do well on MTV & BET, I guess. There's an interesting scene of her cross-dressing, trying to act all gangsta, mouthing Jay Z's verses (you know, for female empowerment, all that jazz). PETA will, however, call her and accuse her of abusing that baby reptile .

Download the video for Upgrade U in AVI format.

Apparently, the public (including me) is really getting too much of her. The hype is going to be saturated at some point, has she seen to that?. For now, she's just everywhere.


In other news:

My filehost, Snapdrive, now has a 1GB bandwidth limit every day, so if you can't download a file from it, it's probably because the limit is exceeded. In that case, you can come back and try again the next day.

Remixed

A bunch of remixes that's been on rotation in my iPod lately. All equally ace.


Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape (Konvict Remix)
This is how the song might have sounded if Pharrell were to produce it. It's got a bouncy, commercial, typical hip-hop beat and a new verse for both Akon & Gwen. Apparently, her next single will be '4 In The Morning'. Wise gal.

Beyonce - Irreplaceable (STA Remix)
A new remix for a ubiquituous song. It actually brings something new to it, with snappy, lean-with-it beats. Basically like the original version, but more upbeat and danceable. Quite like it.

The Sounds - Tony The Beat (Rex The Dog Mix)
If I hadn't heard the original version, I'd assume this is just a nice banging electropop single. One made for clubs, clocking in over 6 minutes. Rex The Dog's so hot right now, isn't he?

Zero 7 - You're My Flame (Justus Köhncke Remix)
A vinyl rip. I actually find this more interesting than the original version (which was a weird choice for a single, there's plenty of better songs on the album). A 7-minute dance remix, but it doesn't feel overtime. I seldom like club remixes, but this one's an exception. One of those random, yet deserving downloads I stumple upon every now and then.

Peter Bjorn And John - Let's Call It Off (Girl Talk Remix)
Yay. Girl Talk remixed Peter Bjorn And John. Which turned out just cool. Strong follow-up single, but can't say the same about half of the album, which is mostly like underproduced, substandard b-sides.

Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars (Hey Team Remix)
This actually adds something to such a bland 'breakthrough' single. With soothing electronic details, it's one for a chillout night. Not exactly new, but I still like it.

Beyoncé - Irreplaceable (Remix feat. Trina)

Okay, so this is a filler post, a little something to 'secure' the traffic.
Not actually, just think I have something to say.
These days, remix doesn't exactly mean remix anymore, does it? Most of the time, for a hip-hop/r&b song, it just means the same instrumental with a new verse featuring a guest rapper. Lazy, yet quite effective.
I know there has been another 'remix' version featuring Ghostface Killah around, this time she's got Trina backing her up, throwing in a few more in-the-face rhymes. There's nothing wrong with this version, since I really need a new one as I've started to grow tired of the album version.
What I want to say here is how the song was marketed. You've seen the video, where she did all her "icy queen" stuff, and this remix just confirms again the whole message of the song: *Fvck U* to the ex-boyfriend. That 'girl power' thing. However, I'd still want to believe that the trembling vocals delivered by her in the chorus is a hint of the fact that she's still not really over him yet, that she's just lying to herself. At least that's what I prefer to be lead to believe it that way. Just me, though. Guys don't like the idea of chicks dumping them so robotically, I guess.
For your interest, "Irreplaceable" was the most played pop song in my iTunes library in 2006. 51 play counts. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the best song of 2006, it just proves that this song is the most accessible, like I can listen to it at any occasions etc. Gosh, I'm so mainstreamish.
And my English is getting worse.

You can get it at IGIF. By the way, their Holiday Hangover mix is quite awesome, too.