Saturday Flashback – Page 13

Saturday Flashback: Günther feat. Samantha Fox – Touch Me

“Got to number one in Sweden.”

Tim: I normally pay no attention to Big Brother – I’ve watched a few series in my time, but nothing since 2009 – but this year it turns out Samantha Fox is in the celebrity version, and finding that out put me in mind of this, which got to number one in Sweden.

Tom: I’m learning that “got to number one in Sweden” is not necessarily an endorsement.

Tim: Well, you say that, but it’s a cover of Samantha’s 1986 Touch Me (I Want Your Body), and that was a perfectly decent piece of ’80s pop, holding up fairly well over time. This, then, is…

Tim: …almost entirely awful.

Tom: Yep. Apart from the parts that are just cribbed from the original.

Tim: Her redone vocals for the chorus are fine, as is the rest of the chorus, musically, but the rest of it is just not good. The beat is dull and repetitive, mostly so when it’s not being sung over, bizarrely. Günther himself sounds like he’s trying to be H.P. Baxter, but is failing miserably.

Tom: Two Xs in Baxxter, although for the discount version here perhaps your styling is more apt.

Tim: Do you know, I have never felt so let down by bastard autocorrect, but you could be right with that second part – he looks like someone who should be barred from going within 100 metres of any park ever. And even though that chorus is good, the amount it gets repeated led me to be thinking “it must be nearly over now” before I was even two minutes in.

Tom: Ha! Yes, about the same here. Still, number one in Sweden.

Tim: Oh, Sweden. Why?

Saturday Flashback: Pet Shop Boys – Always On My Mind

“Congratulations, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000!”

Tom: This week, we saw Pet Shop Boys in concert. It was an incredible gig, and as we left, I said I was surprised that they ended on a cover. And you said…

Tim: “Wait, it’s a cover?”

Tom: I quelled my initial reaction of “how could you not know that?” because, congratulations, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000!

Tim: Hooray!

Tom: Always On My Mind is a country standard. It’s been recorded by dozens of artists — there’s a history on Wikipedia, of course — but I’d like to pick out just the two most popular versions that aren’t Pet Shop Boys, because the difference between them is astonishing.

The canonical version was sung by Elvis Presley, recorded just after he separated from his wife, and is one of his best-known and most loved records. In fact, the only reason the Pet Shop Boys version exists is because they performed it on a tribute-to-Elvis TV show.

Tim: Oh…oh, I do recognise that, now I hear it.

Tom: And it’s emotional. It’s an apology of sorts, and that’s certainly how it came across, but in hindsight it almost sounds like a passive-aggressive apology, the sort provided by someone who doesn’t know why they’re apologising, but knows that they have to. The instrumentation is almost triumphant.

Why do I say that? Because the hindsight is provided by Willie Nelson’s absolutely heartbreaking, wistful version, ten years later.

Tim: Ooh.

Tom: It sounds like an apology. It sounds like it should. Everything, from that one quiet “you did, you did” from a female vocalist in the first verse, to the instrumentation that somehow manages to avoid Elvis’s triumphalism despite being almost as large and full. It sounds like the song of someone who is genuinely sorry.

Tim: It really does. It’s an almost completely different song, and it’s lovely.

Tom: Despite my love for the Pet Shop Boys cover, to me, this will always be the canonical version of Always On My Mind.

Tim: Nice to know. I’ll throw in my two cents cents: looking at that Wikipedia article you linked to, I realised why the Pet Shop Boys’ version is the only one I really know: because it’s on my family’s primary Christmas compilation album, due to its Christmas number one status. Anyway, thank you very much for today’s education.

Saturday Flashback: Chicane – Poppiholla

“No!”

Tom: No!

Tim: YES.

Tom: No. No, no, no.

Tim: Okay, I know, but last week made me think back to this, what with it being a redoing released around the same time. Now, we are all aware of how, well, don’t want to say perfect, but let’s go with iconic, a tune Sigur Rós’s Hoppípolla is (though incidentally, never charted anywhere except the UK, where it only reached number 24).

Tom: Good. I’m glad we’ve established that.

Tim: So what on Earth is a respectable dance act like Chicane of Saltwater and Don’t Give Up fame doing by redoing it?

Tim: Well, aside from doing far better in the charts than the original ever did, and providing a popular launch track for a new Best Of album: basically re-genre-ising it, though that’s probably not an actual phrase. The original was a tad surreal and ethereal – a lovely track, but one used (very well, I should add) on nature documentaries instead of a dancefloor. This, on the other hand – well, it’ll go down well in the clubs because “OH IT’S THAT AMAZING SONG,” and now it has a big beat to it and is very very danceable.

Tom: Hmm. You’re right, of course, and given how much both of us like Almighty Records, I can’t really complain about something like this. It still seems a bit… wrong, though.

Tim: True. But really, it’s obvious. Cheap? Probably. Successful? Oh yes.

Saturday Flashback: Bonnie Tyler feat. Kareen Antonn – Si demain… (Turn Around)

“Tourner en rond”

Tom: I wonder who first realised that the French expression “tourner en rond”, roughly translated as the idiom “running in circles”, sounds a lot like Bonnie Tyler’s big song?

Tom: Either way, in 2003 this was released. Ten weeks at number one in the French charts. Presumably another big payday for writer Jim Steinman.

Tim: Yes, and possibly for whoever rewrote those English lyrics, because I’m fairly sure no-one ever previously mentioned lying like a child in your arms.

Tom: But I’ve got one question, and it might just ruin this for you.

Tim: Oh, go on then, but only on the condition that I can do the same afterwards.

Tom: …is it me, or does Bonnie Tyler sound a bit like she’s retching quite a bit?

Tim: Yep, there it is. And my main question about this is why, from 1:10, does she start telling Santa to turn around?

Saturday Flashback: Girls Can’t Catch – L.E.S. Artistes

“Actually very good.”

Tim: You may remember this lot from when we wrote about their excellent song Echo several years back; if you’ve a really good memory, you’ll remember that I mentioned that despite them splitting up the album they had recorded was due out sometime soon.

Tom: For once, I do actually remember that — which is a sign of just how good that first track was.

Tim: Well, it never came out. Not officially, anyway – it is, for some reason, available on YouTube via a Brazilian music website, and as this track demonstrates it’s actually very good.

Tim: Isn’t it? The verses are fairly standard, admittedly – say, a Saturdays album track. On the other hand, I really can’t get enough of that chorus, it’s just so lovely.

Tom: Really? Because that chorus also sounds like a Saturdays album track, crossed with Adele’s “Someone Like You”.

Tim: The ending’s perhaps – no, definitely – too drawn out; no-one has ever asked for a basically empty four bar loop repeated for over thirty seconds, but on the other hand: damn, that chorus.

Saturday Flashback: Spice Girls feat. England United – (How Does It Feel to Be) On Top of the World

“Not Three Lions.”

Tim: “The trouble with all football songs is that, ultimately, they’re not Three Lions,” says you. Well.

Tom: What have I done to annoy you lately, Tim?

Tim: Haha, oh come now; think of it as an education more than anything else. Because, as far as England goes, the 1998 World Cup was basically Vindaloo and the Three Lions re-release, so this got entirely overlooked despite being the official team song.

Tom: And because whoever’s singing that first verse looks like the creepy male version of Kate Micucci. As for those morphing effects in the video: it was seven years after Michael Jackson’s Black and White, and that’s all they could come up with?

Tim: Which, yeah, kind of sums it all up. If we’re frank, the main reason this got overlooked was because it’s a bloody shambles. Quite why it’s credited to Spice Girls feat. England United despite ‘England United’ being itself a supergroup formed of Ocean Colour Scene, Space and Echo & The Bunnymen, I have no idea.

Tom: I wonder if they couldn’t get the rights to the names? Not all those band members are present and accounted for. They knew which name would bring in the money, though.

Tim: True, and it does at least maintain the ridiculosity present in the song itself – seriously, what’s going on? There’s a good key change, I’ll grant them that much, but it strikes me as though someone stabbed a pen at random into the top 40 four times and thought, “Right, let’s put them together and hope it works.” It really doesn’t.

Tom: The first thing I thought was “it sounds like someone tried to rip off the Lightning Seeds”. Which, lest we forget, were the band for Three Lions.

Tim: Yeah – weirdly, it seems to be the Spice Girls’ vocals that do that, despite sounding horribly weedy and backing vocalish, despite them being ostensibly the main act and actually leading the chorus, and everything else just…splurges around. I don’t know who thought this would be a good idea, but I do hope they got fired for it.

Saturday Flashback: Gregorian – Heaven

Tim: Okay so let’s discuss these guys. If you recall, they performed Masters of Chant when competing to represent Germany at Eurovision this year, which was an original song; that’s not their normal schtick, though.

Tom: That is astonishing.

Tim: Admittedly they don’t normally draft in female singers, but their collection of covers is really quite impressive – ten albums so far, each with a dozen or so tracks reinterpreted to (mostly) fit the restrictions for true Gregorian chants.

Tom: Not even close, Tim. Not even close.

Tim: Well, that’s what they claim, and to be honest the rules seem so far outside my musical knowledge that I’m happy to stay neutral on the topic.

Sometimes, the covers are just a bit meh, such as Boulevard of Broken Dreams; sometimes they sound entirely ludicrous, such as their version of Clocks, where their seeming attempt to rave it up almost gives Scooter tribute band Moped a run for their money. Every now and again, though, they hit pure gold, such as with this, or My Heart Will Go On, and you wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if in fact they’d recorded the original.

Tom: So here’s the question: who buys this? Who buys ten albums of this? I recognise there’s a market for cover versions, but how many people listen to pop music and think “it’s good, but what I really want is for it to be sung by people impersonating monks”.

Tim: Well I thought that, and my initial thought was “people who stream music” – no payment, just a fun half checking out weird stuff. But they’ve been going 15 years, so I’ve really no idea. On the other hand, when it works, it works:
take this, with its combination of old instruments such as violins, tinkly chimes and, erm, electric guitars. With its weird but quite brilliant and utterly triumphant pitch jump upwards at 3:10.

Tom: And with that odd choice to drop to the lower harmony for the last note of a line sometimes. That’s the opposite of how it normally works, chaps.

Tim: With the aforementioned female that makes it almost as much a cover of DJ Sammy as of Bryan Adams. The entire act is ridiculous and wonderful, and has just about sneaked past Nica & Joe (who, incidentally, also competed to represent Germany with an original song) as my favourite classical reinterpretation group, so well done to them.

Tom: I suppose it’s cheap enough to produce: all they have to do is sell a few albums and they’re in the money.

Tim: Then I guess that’s all you need, along with a confidence that your fans won’t realise you’re not playing by the rules. Or will, but will leap to your defence in the style of YouTube commenter martharoyce, who says that “another of my favourite musicians are called ‘Faun’ but they are not woodland creatures.” So that’s told YOU.

Saturday Flashback: Serena Autieri – All’Alba Sorgerò

Tim: I was watching Hercules the other day, because why not, and then I looked up the cracking theme song Go The Distance, recorded Elton John/Demi Lovato style by Michael Bolton, and discovered that there was also a Spanish version by the wonderful Ricky Martin.

Tom: Hey, there was a Spanish version of Livin’ La Vida Loca, and I reckon it’s better than the English one — and notice how close those two videos are. Don’t knock it.

Tim: Hey, not knocking anything, especially when the video has him wandering around the underworld. At first I thought it was a bit weird and novel, but then I thought: of course they record songs in multiple languages, the films are massive in every country. So here’s the Italian version of Let It Go.

Tim: Now, you may be wondering: why this one? What’s so great about Italian that I picked it out over Sweden’s Slå Dig Fri, Russia’s Otpusti i zabud, Poland’s Mam Tę Moc, or even Thailand’s ปล่อยมันไป? Or the mash-up with all 25 translations? Easy: the lyrics. By and large, they stay as close to a straight translation of the English as possible, given the rhythmic restrictions – if you vary too much, you run the risk of changing the story, or giving the song a completely different meaning. And yet, that’s exactly what they did here.

Tom: There’s a wonderful series of articles about this, including Disney’s decision to use Modern Standard Arabic rather than something more colloquial. It’s worth a read.

Tim: Unlike every other version, there’s no simple translation of “Let It Go” as a chorus line, or even any repeated line at all – the title appears just once, right at the end, where it translates to Dawn Will Rise. Rather than a full celebration of being able to finally let it go, as everywhere else, it starts out just plain resentful; the first chorus she’s still wanging on about how she can’t do what she wants, and at the second she’s only just decided to explore her powers. Come to the end, mind, we’re right where we should be – history is history and the dawn rises over her new kingdom.

I don’t know whether that makes it a better song or not, nor who’s responsible for it, but anyway I wanted to bring the world of foreign Disney songs to the table and this one has a slightly interesting story, so there you go. One other thing: in the past hour and a half, I’ve listened to that damn piano tinkling intro more than fifteen times, and I’m now fairly sure I dedicate way too much time to this site.

Tom: Or possibly too much time to Disney. Here, have a remix.

Tim: I don’t know which possibility would be worse: that you spent actual time searching for a fairly awful remix for a quick hyperlink gag, or that you have this on standby to listen to fairly often. Props to the video maker for the pulsating clouds, though.

Saturday Flashback: Typically Tropical – Barbados

“I’m just in shock really.”

Tim: In an attempt to be educational, we’ve had a few tracks here in the “songs you didn’t know were covers” – namely Everytime We Touch, Hey Mickey and Torn. We were surprised by those, but this is in a TOTALLY DIFFERENT LEAGUE because, and I say this with only a small degree of hyperbole, it will BLOW. YOUR. MIND.

Tom: Oh, I haven’t heard that in years! But alas, Tim, I have heard it.

Tim: Oh.

Tom: In fact, I remember that from when I was a kid, before the Vengaboys were even a band. Number 1 in 1975, you know. I can remember my Mum complaining about that the cover version wasn’t nearly as good.

Tim: Fair enough, although I will happily place a sizeable bet on most people under the age of, say, 30 having no idea. Which is weird, because while I know the Vengaboys had a reputation for being unusual and kooky, did no-one point it out at the time? It was one of the biggest tracks of that year, with airplay all over the bloody place, but I heard not one mention of it.

I don’t mean that in a “they got cheated” way, mind – I’m sure they made plenty of cash, being the only credited lyricists – but I…well, I’m just in shock really. The one thing I really want to know is why they changed to to Ibiza – if you’re going to go somewhere else, why not go to Jamaica so you can stop Uncle John calling every day?

Tom: Because they knew their target market, Tim. And it worked.

Saturday Flashback: Marija Šerifović – Molitva

“Not exactly the stuff of wonder.”

Tim: So, tonight’s the night, and rather than producing another Reject I’d like to take a look back at an unusual point in Eurovision’s recent history; to be more precise, 2007, and Serbia’s entry.

Tom: I have no memory of that song. The face rings a bell, but… I know it’s been nine years, but seriously, I have no memory of that song.

Tim: So here’s the unusual part: this won. It’s the only victor since 1999 to have not been sung in English, and the only victor since 2001 to have a key change – in fact it has two. So how did it win? Let’s face it, even by mid-00’s Eurovision quality it’s not exactly the stuff of wonder.

Well, I’ve a theory. Sure it’s got those counting against it, but on the other hand: it was one of the few acts that year that were neither Lordi-inspired hefty rock, nor the novelty ‎Verka Serduchka, nor… Scooch.

Tom: Ouch. That… yes, now you come to mention it, 2007 was not a good year. I mean, Verka was great, but the rest…

Tim: There was still a bit of shoutiness involved to get passionate about, and given that it’s in foreign that could be about something exciting.

Tom: “In foreign”, there.

Tim: Though in reality it’s just about praying to be loved by someone). On top of that, it wasn’t a runaway winner – not far behind was the aforementioned novelty of Verka Seduchka, and not far behind that was the top of the metal crowd, from Russia. In summary: basically, it got lucky.