Måneskin made their big debut on the Italian version of the comeptition show X Factor in 2017.
They came in second to Lorenzo Licitra, who 95% of you have never heard of.
They did so well largely because of this Four Seasons cover, which I would not turf over to Totally Covered because a lot of people don't know that it's a cover.
Gosh, this week did not go the way I expected.
When I wanted to post this song, I ended up posting their Eurovision winning song, which is inarguably a better song. But this song is also amazing, and it needed to be highlighted. It was, in fact, the success of "Zitti e Buoni" that led directly to the 2021 attention on this song, and it ended up being a worldwide hit...
....which is why they were nominated for an American Music Award four years after the song's release.
This song is maybe the most compelling reason why we're starting to post covers here. You see, yesterday, I talked about my favorite album of 2023 - and my favorite song on that album.
My favorite SONG of 2023 was this one. And I wrote about it in December of 2023 on Totally Covered. It never felt like it belonged there, at all. Mashups are weird - the band took two songs and shoved them together and made something that was strangely better than the two were apart. I did such a good job writing that, and so few of you read it, that the rest of this post is quoting HEAVILY what I said in December.
And, when I opned the post with, "I'm not going to lie. Today's feature was SUPPOSED to be the other blog", it was a Rolling Quartz original song that just was not as good as this one.
As you know, as part of my wiring process, I look for live performances of a featured song. And, I found one. I was looking for a second and I found a full performace by the band.... which I decided to watch.
This mashup cover of "Pink Venom" by BLACKPINK (I wrote the "Pink Venom" post two days after this one, because I needed the contaxt, but this is SO much better!) and "MIC Drop" by BTS was featured in that performance. It blew me away.
So, I started looking for the cover individually.... and I found it.... not realizing that it was not just a live thing, but something the band ACTUALLY did, with AleXa coming in to share vocals with Jayoung. AleXa is a Korean-based performer from Oklahoma, and is best known as the winner of the NBC competition series American Song Contest.
Of course, AleXa has her own career and can't tour with Rolling Quartz all the time, despite being unofficially called the band's 6th member. Jayoung, however, is perfectly capable of shouldering the vocals herself.
And no, this is not the same live performance I used before. This is one where Jayoung is not doing an AleXa impersonation during her part.
By the way, this was the full performance, and it is spectacular - "Pink Drop" starts around 9:20.
I didn't say I wouldn't post the original. It is an amazing song and was a worldwide hit in 1979. It was a top 20 hit in the US, and number one in many countries, including his native France and his father's native Spain (it was #2 in his mother's native Italy).
The song was just fun, and it changed his life - he found success in Europe, if not the US.
And yes, he's still around, and he still performs the song with just as much aplomb.
The changes to Totally Covered and Wicked Guilty Pleasures have been a long time coming. I had thought about merging the two for about two years now. It's a lot of work to maintain TWO daily blogs, and I had neglected Totally Covered.
Then, March 2024 happened. You know, I do the whole #MapleLeafMarch thing every year, and in the lead up to that, I try to discover new Canadian music. One thing I discovered was that Elisapie - an artist I was not previously familiar with but I sure as hell am now - had in 2023 recorded an album of covers, translated into Inuktitut - which is a language spoken by some First Nations people who happen to live in the far north. The album was, in fact, called Inuktitut - and, as will be a recurring theme this week, I own it on vinyl now - and it is my favorite album of 2023.
I went on to postfivecoversbyElisapie between the end of February and the beginning of April of this year - on Totally Covered. You need to go check those out, because they are amazing.
I posted nothing about her on this blog, and that bothered me a lot. A lot of times in the past, when I discovered a song was a cover, I would often post the original here, and the cover on Totally Covered. In these cases, it just didn't feel right to do that. I really wanted those songs over HERE.
So, this is a song I held back - mostly because it didn't have an official video, but it is also my favorite song from my favorite album of 2023. I want you to hear it and see it - so that's why it's here. This version is absolutely sublime.
Because I think more can be said. And, since I have recently purchased Eyelid Movies on vinyl, I felt it was time to revisit the pride of Saratoga Springs and tell you where I've been since this time, and what's going on with this blog. So, this week, I will talk about the future of Wicked Guilty Pleasures and Totally Covered, and also revisit some of my favorite posts from the past.
Don't worry. There is a future. We're not going away. At all. By any stretch. I literally already have posts written that you won't see until 2029. So, there's a clue.
Before I do that, though, let's talk about the coolness of this song. Because it is seriously cool. And in the 14 years since its initial release, it has not gotten less cool. But since we wrote our initial post, Phantogram have become something of an industry darling. The members have been in high-profile relationships (and Sarah Barthel somehow made it onto NBC's Olympic coverage because of that).
And the band has changed. This is the band performing the song in 2014. I feel like they were still breaking out of their shell then. Sarah is behind the keyboards.
By 2019, she's on the bass. And, as synth-heavy as the song is, you can hear the bass now.
In 2023, she's interacting with the crowd.
Much like Sarah Barthel, we're growing and changing. NO, we did not go blonde. We ARE looking for opportunities to get bigger and better. To that end, we want your comments. We are going to grow this blog to a real source for music, and not just a guy regurgitating his thoughts on old songs. OK, this week, it's gonna be old songs.
Going forward, this blog is going to be the focus. You'll not see Totally Covered go away - it's way too much fun - but you're going to start to see covers over here. There's too many good ones, and I think too many were getting turfed over to the other blog - and people read this one.
You know, I sometimes sit on drafts for a very long time, especially when they are unexpected.
And the unexpected pieces of this, the fourth single and title song from her second album, are as follows:
1) Suzanne Vega, usually a solo songwriter, co-wrote this song with her backing band, who feature prominently in the video.
2) This song was her 2nd trip to the Billboard Hot 100 (her first being "Luka", of course). The third single from Solitude Standing - you know, the one that preceded this one - "Tom's Diner" - in it's DNA remixed version, would go on to become her third.
I bought Solitude Standing in 1987, on cassette - it came in a longbox, which was a type of packaging to prevent theft - and this song, which personifies solitude as a woman, was quickly one of my favorites.
Somehow, when performed live, the song becomes a little angrier, sharper - more focused. The cool, laid-back version jumps to life when there's a crowd.
Vega recorded a sparser version of the song in 2011 - she did a series of four albums called Close-Up - each labeled by volume. This version is a live version of the one recorded on Close-Up Vol. 3.
The Close-Up albums are really cool and interesting, by the way, and if you are a Suzanne Vega fan, you should seek them out.
What? We're ending our hiatus on an obscure Spanish-language song?
Yes. Yes we are.
You see, Maná has been around since the early 1980s (in 1981 as Sombrero Verde, adopting their later name in 1986) - and yet, this 2011 song, literally thirty years into their career as a band, was a breakthrough single for them in their home country of Mexico. They had other singles, and a couple of other hits - and a ton of US Latin Chart hits - but this one - this launched them into the upper stratosphere of hitmaking.
But, this is a band that has won many awards, including four Grammys and eight Latin Grammys.
It's a mournful and still an upbeat song. And it doesn't matter that you don't speak Spanish. Enjoy the emotion.
Of course they did a pandemic live version, 9 years after its release. And of course it sounded just like the original. Maná has been nothing if not consistent!
