38 Plays
“The Killing Moon” by Nouvelle Vague (Echo & the Bunnymen cover)
Somehow, Novelle Vague, the French band that excels at covers of nouvelle vague artists of the ’80s, transformed the eerie original of “The Killing Moon” by Echo & the Bunnymen into a quiet, and quite lovely song of their own.
Didcha know?
Ian McCulloch once said in an interview with Smash Hits magazine that the song is about “A moon with a machine gun”
Well, there you go.
132 Plays
“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” by Arcade Fire (Talking Heads cover)
It’s hard to imagine a person who doesn’t like Arcade Fire, and similarly, a person who doesn’t like Talking Heads for their ingenious post-punk/new wave songs, so many of which are classics.
Didcha know?
According to the Stop Making Sense commentary track, the title “Naive Melody” refers to the music. On the track, the guitar part and the bass part are doing the same thing throughout the whole song. According to David Byrne, many professional musicians would not play a song written in that fashion, and that is what makes the melody naive.
“Naive Melody”, from the album Speaking in Tongues, is not the most well-known Talking Heads song. That title belongs to “Once in a Lifetime” or “Burning Down the House”. However, that certainly doesn’t mean that it’s not a great song. In fact, after listening to the song for the first time, my initial thought was: why ISN’T this their most well-known song? It’s gorgeous, simple, pleasant.
Who knows?
At least Arcade Fire got the message.
218 Plays
“Strange Fruit” by Jeff Buckley (Billie Holiday cover)
Any Billie Holiday song is difficult to cover, for the simple fact that her voice was so sincerely unique and timeless. With that said, Buckley, my favorite musician throughout high school, creates a haunting (as per usual) cover of a perennial classic. Sometimes, I forget that this was a recording of a young man, and not an elderly black woman, not unlike the women I grew up vaguely knowing, somewhere in the Deep South. I think, perhaps, Buckley, and maybe Antony Hegarty, are the only ones who could pull off such a cover and not sound like they are cloying.
