This post brought to you by Soccer Mom in Denial - posting every Monday on a different musical memory.
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I was watching the movie Wordplay (which is awesome if you're a big NY Times crossword geek like me - includes Jon Stewart who is hilarious!) and there was a song playing that I couldn't quite place. The tune was familiar, the singer was familiar, but they didn't match. My puzzling mind tried to figure it out.
Finally it came to me - Shawn Colvin singing This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) - a song I've known to be sung by the Talking Heads. She did a wonderful version of it and I even felt like I heard phrases I'd never heard before. A positive effort all around.
And that got my puzzling mind thinking about remakes (not covers - which are more like what wedding singers or Las Vegas bands do) of other famous songs - and maybe not always so successful. Here's a list of a few remakes I like - can you add any others?
- One: U2 (original), Mary J Blige and U2 (remake) [not really a remake but oh so much better with MJB]
- Hurt: Nine Inch Nails (o), Johnny Cash (r)
- Red Red Wine: Neil Diamond (o), UB40 (r)
- Tainted Love: Gloria Jones (o), Soft Cell (r)
- ...
Puzzling minds want to know...
6 comments:
My favorite:
Can't Get Next To You: The Temptations originally. Remade by Annie Lennox. It's AWESOME.
Sigh.... why I love you. Wordplay, Jon Stewart, Talking Heads. You manage to fit so many people and things I love in such a short piece.
I hear Red Red Wine and ONLY think of UB40. It is as if they own it. Same with Tainted Love. That is Soft Cell's.
A few of mine:
Take A Chance on Me: ABBA (o), Erasure (r)
Solsbury Hill: Peter Gabriel (o), Erasure (r)
River Deep Mountain High: Ike and Tina Turner (o), Erasure (r)
I'm getting lots of great suggestions for my iPod! I'm going to check these all out.
And SMID - LOVE that all of your favorite remakes are by Erasure. But, of course.
Almost ALL of Instant Karma. Wow, what a fabulous collection (excepting, of course, Avril Lavigne singing "Imagine" which is simply a travesty). But I love, love, love this. It's the project for Darfur.
I particularly love "Working Class Hero" by Green Day, "Jealous Guy" by Youssou N'Dour, "Instant Karma" by U2, "Mother" by Christina Aguilera (yes, really), and "Power to the People" by Black Eyed Peas
I like the re-make of Fools Rush In. I'm blanking on who sings it though.
This is kind of a running theme around our house, the kids humming some "new" song only to be grilled by the parents about whether they know the source of the original.
Always, ALWAYS there is incredulous look and conversation about the idea that this NEW song could ever have existed before...
No matter who does it, no one will ever top Marc Cohn's Walking in Memphis. Can't. Be. Done.
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