4 February 2021 - Black Eyed Peas ft. Shakira - Girl Like Me

Brace yourselves.  New BEP.

Kind of.  Shakira and will.i.am were working on this song in 2008, and finally got around to recording and releasing this fantastic, strangely intimate collaboration.  How many callbacks to old Shakia songs do you hear?  How many times is apl.d.ap using terrible Spanish?  All we know is, it's a fun song.  

The song is presently on the Billboard charts, as we write this, #35 with a bullet.  The video was filmed in Los Angeles (the Peas) and Barcelona (Shakira), and yet it looks like they're in the same room.

But you didn't come here for the video.

You came here for the TikTok dances.

3 February 2021 - Poe - Trigger Happy Jack

The mid-90's brought us a lot of angry-sounding female singer-songwriters, largely due to the appeal of Liz Phair.  Yep, I'm giving the credit to Liz.  Fight me in the comments.  

Some were excellent.   Some were awful.  

Poe managed to stand out from that crowd by bringing members of Suicidal Tendencies and Guns 'n' Roses into the studio with her.  Her music was - is - borderline experimental folk-punk.  Her first big single was "Trigger Happy Jack", a justifiably angry song that makes what I think is a pretty obvious statement in the chorus.

One great thing about Poe is that she is just as emotive live as she was on video. Watch her throw her whole body into this performance.

2 February 2021 - Mason Williams - Classical Gas

Believe it or not, this instrumental classic was written for a TV show.... by a comedy writer.  The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was the show, and Mason Williams was the head writer.  Williams wanted the song to be fuel for the classical guitar, so he titled his piece "Classical Gasoline".  It was abbreviated on the call sheet as "Classical Gas", and that's the title that stuck.  

The Smothers Brothers were interested in launching new musicians on their show, and so they gave Mason a chance to perform his song... which he did in 1968.  The song ended up being a massive hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.  It also earned Williams a couple of Grammys - the song won three total.  

He's backed on vinyl by famed session musicians The Wrecking Crew, and on the show by the Smothers Brothers Orchestra - I think it was an orchestra? - and it's still so dense and layered and beautiful today.  

1 February 2021 - Tom Cochrane - Life Is A Highway

Tom Cochrane was already a star in Canada when this song become an absolutely gigantic hit.  But it almost didn't happen.

Cochrane used to be the lead vocalist and songwriter for a band called Red Rider, and he wrote a song called "Love Is A Highway".  The band never recorded it, because he considered it unusable...

...but picked it back up a few years later for his 1991 solo release Mad Mad World, retitled and retooled.  It was a fun and happy song that became a huge worldwide hit.

When Mad Mad World was reissued for its 25th anniversary, Cochrane included the original demo on the album.  You can hear that it's a very different song, but also, you can hear where the big hit came from.  

Also, this was hard to find, so you're welcome.  

 

29 January 2021 - Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner

This is perhaps the oddest history of a song I have ever posted here.

I first heard the song in 1987, as the opening track on Solitude Standing, Suzanne Vega's 2nd album.  It was a crisp and clear acapella song... so clear that it was used to test the MP3 file format for clarity.  Yes, the answer to the trivia question "what was the first MP3" is "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega.  I immediately loved it.

This live version captures the album version quite perfectly.

Fast forward to 1990.  Two British producers that called themselves DNA remixed the song with a thumping bass track.  They didn't ask anyone if they could do this.  They just did it. They went ahead and released the track to dance clubs in Europe.  Her record label - A&M - caught wind of this and did something remarkable.  With the approval of Suzanne Vega (who actually liked what DNA did with her song), A&M bought and released the remixed song.  

It would become Vega's second biggest pop hit of her career (after "Luka") and arguably her most recognizable.  

28 January 2021 - Depeche Mode - I Feel You

What do you get when you cross Depeche Mode with guitars?

One serious hot, rocking song and a huge hit song.

While Depeche Mode had a devoted fan base from their years of electronic-oriented music, this new direction for the band, which put a guitar in Martin L. Gore's hands and put Alan Wilder behind a drum kit, ended up bringing them one of their biggest career hits.  The unexpected bombast, as it turns out, resonated.

As bombastic as that song is, it is somehow more so live.  David Gahan somehow looks quite comfortable belting out the powerful, straight-ahead rock song.

27 January 2021 - Blondie - Heart Of Glass

A couple of days ago, I was writing some posts for Totally Covered in advance, and I decided to pull out a Miley Cyrus cover of a Blondie classic, as I am SURE I am going to be billing that on Twitter.  Then I realized that, although I had posted TWO covers of this song over THERE, I had never posted anything about the original.  There's no good reason for it, so let's remedy this.  

This song was built around a drum machine beat, which opens the song.  This was something that, in 1979, was not commonly seen in rock music.... but was seen in the popular disco music of the day.  As a result, Blondie did suffer a temporary backlash in the punk community that had supported them for so many years.  

Of course, this song was also Blondie's first Top 40 hit, making it all the way to #1..... and led to their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so I think they made the right choice.  

Now, go to Totally Covered and check out not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different covers, all very different from each other, but all fantastic in their own ways.