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[cimorene]

Yesterday Brother Windows came over and got acquainted with Arwen, and Wax tried to convert him to the worship of Adam Lambert. It's like a reflex with her, you guys. (She didn't actually try her mom, but she played it in her mom's car, which resulted in the dreaded "He sounds like a cat". A cat? Seriously? A CAT? What is she smoking? And also, wtf room does she have to talk when she voluntarily listens to Il Dio, or whatever those smarmy Italian asshats are called?)

I was in the shower and heard Adam's version of "Feeling Good" coming through the door so I yelled, "NOT AS GOOD AS NINA!" through the door. (A program to annoy Wax by saying the same thing repeatedly only works if you actually say it pretty much every time it comes up! Because her memory's not great, and otherwise she won't notice a pattern at all.)

"SHUT UP ABOUT NINA!" she said, to my delight.

"Feeling Good" is an interesting case because even though Lambert uses Muse's arrangement, he pretty much changes the genre again, so the three versions basically represent three genres. This despite the fact that Muse's arrangement has more in common with the sound of Nina's than you'd think, really. You can listen to them all in a row without the sense of repetition you get from, like, an album of remixes.

Like Emilie Autumn's brilliant industrial electric violin covers of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and an ever-increasing series of songs by The Smiths including "I Know It's Over" and "Sing Me to Sleep". (I just wish she'd do my favorites - "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" and "A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours". They're probably not overtly death-obsessed enough in the lyrics for her taste.) Obviously the melody is there, but it takes a certain genius to conceive of putting a cello solo in "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

In contrast, I find it really irritating to listen to Ella Fitzgerald's version of "The Lady is a Tramp" because I'm so fond of Sarah Vaughan's and Ella singing with different pacing keeps messing me up. Other than that, the song is practically exactly the same.

Comments

[emmuzka]

I managed to convert one of my sisters as a fan. I just last week sent her the entire American Idol season 8 for her to get some perspective, with like, viewing instructions and shit. :D

I don't get people who are very nazi about covers and arrangements. As long as the cover doesn't want to cash in with releasing a version that tries to *mimic* the original, it's all good. ha, personally I'm like "Kanye's "Stronger" was not original? the slow Mad Worls isn't original? More music for me, then! :D"

[prysmicdork]

I've somehow managed to acquire two versions of Beyonce's Crazy in Love that do that really well, one of them is by Snow Patrol and makes it into a pretty standard alt rock song and the other is by the Bellini Sisters into a sort of 20's nightclub girlgroup thing (there must be a genre that describes this, but my brain is totally failing me there). Almost more fun to listen to them as a group because you get to hear the song really being played with?

[cimorene]

That is cool! But of course, sometimes you don't want to listen to the same thing twice right in a row. I do like to put other versions of songs that I like on the end of playlists; I think of them as BONUS REMIXES or something.