1 |
Violet Orlandi |
"Wonderwall" |
single |
I hate a lot of songs, |
2 |
Charlotte Wessels |
"May It Be" |
May It Be +1 |
no matter what contrary impression of my positivity you might have garnered |
3 |
Moonlight Haze |
"Never Say Never" |
single |
from the fact that I usually write about (for some loose sense of "about") songs I like. |
4 |
Eye of Melian |
"Doorway of Night" |
Doorway of Night +2 |
Deep, enduring, identity-building hatred tends to only develop for popular songs, |
5 |
Divided Island |
"Oxygen" |
Oxygen +3 |
because without morbid environmental repetition I would just forget them. |
6 |
Confidential |
"Salvation" |
single |
I am a 54-year-old human who lives in a country bordering the North Atlantic, |
7 |
Trick or Treat |
"Creepy Symphony" |
single |
and thus I am doomed to hear The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" and Oasis' "Wonderwall" without any explicit consent, |
8 |
Ghost |
"Twenties" |
Twenties +2 |
frequently and with no apparent hope for respite. |
9 |
The Lightbringer of Sweden |
"Strike Back" |
single |
I like "Mr. Brightside". Sometimes, when it wafts into my air, I hum along. |
10 |
Jani Liimatainen |
"All Dreams Are Born to Die" |
single |
If I suddenly never heard it again, I suspect I might eventually choose to play it for myself. |
11 |
Manigance |
"Huis clos" |
single |
This is not true of "Wonderwall". |
12 |
IKINÄ |
"Tietäjät tietää" |
single |
If forgetting were a muscle, I would want to know if there were steroids that could give me super-human power |
13 |
Answer from Cygnus |
"Les échos endolorants" |
Cygnus |
for the sole forgetting power of forgetting "Wonderwall". |
14 |
Voutsa |
"Paperinuket" |
single |
I would flex it by forgetting every individual element of this miserable song: |
15 |
AINA |
"Rauhanrikkoja" |
single |
The plodding rhythm, |
16 |
Where's My Bible |
"Chapter II: Void" |
single |
the gracelessly uninventive vocal melodies, |
17 |
Septicflesh |
"Hierophant" |
single |
Liam's terrible bleating delivery of the terrible melodies, |
18 |
Answer from Cygnus |
"L'instant" |
Cygnus |
the dreary cliches he delivers with such terrible bleating, |
19 |
Lucifer's Child |
"Nova Tenebris" |
single |
the unbearably smugly lazy playing of all the conventional rock instruments, |
20 |
Watain |
"Serimosa" |
Serimosa +1 |
the sighing faux-dramatic strings like a cartoon of an orchestra |
21 |
Lord Belial |
"On a Throne of Souls" |
single |
was shoddily silkscreened on the outside of a balloon that was then desultorily inflated |
22 |
Brundarkh |
"The Dark Tree" |
single |
and almost sealed so that it deflates with a pathetic exhalatory whimper over the course of 4 interminable minutes. |
23 |
Abbath |
"The Book of Breath" |
single |
If there is such a thing as an irredeemably dull rock song, |
24 |
Drudkh |
"The Nocturnal One" |
single |
this must be surely be it. |
25 |
Unru |
"Der Hauch einer Freiheit" |
Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten |
If there is a song that represents eating a steak covered with cheap ketchup |
26 |
A Tergo Lupi |
"Kominn Heim" |
single |
in order to maximize the ratio of emitted methane to physical enjoyment, this is it. |
27 |
Answer from Cygnus |
"Afflictions" |
Cygnus |
If there is a song that over-simplistically represents Rock Songs like a square with a triangle on top of it |
28 |
Sylvaine |
"I Close My Eyes so I Can See" |
Nova |
filled with asbestos and bedbugs represents Houses, this is it. |
29 |
Emma Ruth Rundle |
"Pump Organ Song" |
single |
If you love any other song that anybody ever says is bad, this is the song to remind you |
30 |
The Weather Station |
"Marsh" |
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars |
that even if they're right, your bad song isn't as bad as this massively and perpetually popular bad song. |
31 |
Annicke Shireen |
"Prey" |
single |
Meanwhile, Violet Orlandi makes metal covers of, usually, non-metal songs. |
32 |
KAIRA |
"Ночь Сварога" |
single |
There's a small industry of this, which I support both enthusiastically and industriously, |
33 |
OCTAVIAGRACE |
"Aurally lover" |
single |
and several of my favorite practitioners (like Orlandi, Lauren Babic, Halocene, First to Eleven and Melodicka Brothers) have collaborated in pairs and groups. |
34 |
BiSH |
"愛してると言ってくれ" |
愛してると言ってくれ +1 |
Orlandi has already done many other covers I've loved of songs I also loved in the original (most recently Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"), |
35 |
zenbukiminoseida. |
"Roman Jihen" |
Roman Jihen +1 |
and several others I've loved despite not having strong feelings about the original (most recently Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark"). |
36 |
MAD JAMIE |
"BUREIKŌ" |
single |
I often compile aspirationally-comprehensive playlists of covers of particular popular songs, |
37 |
mahina |
"Drive your dreams" |
single |
and thus I am painfully aware that there's also a shadow industry of cynically horrific style-transposed covers |
38 |
kobore |
"Tender" |
single |
of any normal song (and what could be more numbingly normal than "Wonderwall"?) |
39 |
PELICAN FANCLUB |
"Astro Girl" |
解放のヒント |
into music-box twinkle, mock-modern-classical pseudo-dignity, suburban-Starbucks open-mic-brunch plaint, perky collegiate a cappella, having your head cheerfully ground to a pulp by a malfunctioning treadmill, or getting it stuck in the back of an old arcade console while trying to reach a piece of only-slightly-prechewed gum. |
40 |
mol-74 |
"Halation" |
OOORDER |
There is no song, even "Wonderwall", that can't be made even duller. |
41 |
KAMI WA SAIKORO WO FURANAI |
"LOVE" |
事象の地平線 |
I have not actually been in the habit of meticulously scoring each pair of covers and originals, |
42 |
Xmas Eileen |
"TRAINING DAY" |
single |
so I say the following with no statistical grounding at all, but still: |
43 |
ASH DA HERO |
"Remember" |
single |
Violet Orlandi singing "Wonderwall" seems overwhelmingly likely to be the cover with the biggest positive gap between how much I like it and how much I liked the original, |
44 |
Fangoria |
"La pregunta del millón" |
Edificaciones Paganas 5 |
and fairly likely to be the one with the largest absolute difference between the two, as well. |
45 |
Ultraboss |
"Where the People Dance" |
Yachtmaster |
I will celebrate the existence of all the worse covers |
46 |
10eighty6 |
"Dreamless" |
single |
if the universe requires them to exist for this one to exist. |
47 |
Letting Up Despite Great Faults |
"Self-Portrait" |
IV |
It's still the same song, essentially, existentially, |
48 |
CLEWS |
"Lean Across" |
single |
but Orlandi and producer Joey Izzo approach it with this ingenious hypothetical in their earnestly outstretched hands: |
49 |
Belle and Sebastian |
"Unnecessary Drama" |
single |
what if this song just didn't suck? |
50 |
LÉON |
"All My Heroes" |
Circles |
What if it were magnificent? |
51 |
POLIÇA |
"Rotting" |
single |
What if, instead of plodding along, |
52 |
Charlotte Sands |
"Lost" |
single |
it marched with a hitch-step double-bass menace into crash-cymbal fusillades? |
53 |
Jillian Rossi |
"Gemini" |
single |
What if the guitars were played with pinging arpeggios, |
54 |
Dasha |
"FUCK YOU" |
single |
instead of strummed with a ketchup-covered steak impaled on a weary retired (and never particularly successful) pirate's hook-for-a-hand? |
55 |
Leah Sykes |
"All The Cool Kids Get High" |
single |
What if the vocal melodies wove around their assigned notes like a seditious ballet of asps? |
56 |
Stand Atlantic |
"hair out" |
hair out +3 |
What if Violet Orlandi sang it, instead of Liam Gallagher? |
57 |
The Linda Lindas |
"Talking To Myself" |
Talking To Myself +1 |
What if it sounded like dawn rising or night falling |
58 |
Boh Doran |
"Some People" |
single |
or galaxies unspiraling |
59 |
Blanca Vergara |
"27 Días" |
single |
instead of a joke-balloon half-heartedly attempting to stifle its own flatulent expiration? |
60 |
Nilüfer Yanya |
"the dealer" |
PAINLESS |
They didn't make it any shorter, and the words themselves haven't gotten any less simplistic, |
61 |
Rivilin |
"Nether" |
Azure Rain |
but it turns out I don't care. |
62 |
Wiley |
"Jewellery Gone Upstairs" |
single |
What if "Maybe you're gonna be the one that saves me" wasn't an implicit declaration of apathy, |
63 |
Soul Glo |
"Driponomics" |
Driponomics +1 |
but an admission of intrinsic human potential? |
64 |
Bartees Strange |
"Heavy Heart" |
Heavy Heart +1 |
The transformational truth about love is that we save each other by being willing to, |
65 |
Michael Cassidy |
"I Am Free" |
single |
not by having any kind of unprecedented or irreplicable power. |
66 |
Wrest |
"Kingdom" |
End All The Days |
None of this version's elements are individually unbelievable, |
67 |
Prince Kaybee |
"Breakfast In Soweto" |
single |
and between the day it came out and this day when I'm writing about it, Violet has already efficiently moved on to her next cover, |
68 |
Sebastian Yatra |
"Érase Una Vez (Pero Ya No)" |
single |
a re-setting I initially like less of a song I very definitely like more. |
69 |
K!ngdom |
"Rituales Raros" |
single |
We don't save each other by being perfect, |
70 |
Finde Fantasma |
"Siempre Mal" |
Intramuros |
we do it by being there, or here, or wherever we find ourselves. |
71 |
Maraton |
"Perdurant Lives" |
single |
We do it by believing that anything, a song or a moment or a day, |
72 |
Cold Night For Alligators |
"Dusty Patterns" |
The Hindsight Notes |
can justify living long enough to experience it. |
73 |
Hereafter |
"All We Have is Now" |
single |
We do it by not giving up, even if today was going to be the day but didn't turn out to be. |
74 |
Marillion |
"Care (Iv) Angels on Earth" |
An Hour Before It's Dark |
And then, even when we think we've done enough to fill a week, or a life, |
75 |
Robyn |
"Buffalo Stance" |
single |
we sing 73 other songs, new and weird and terrified and incensed, until we come back to something we thought we already knew, |
76 |
Mzansi Youth Choir |
"Fight Song" |
single |
only to find that it and we have become something else, sometimes better than we could have imagined but sometimes it's not clear |
77 |
Phyllomedusa |
"No Love For Human Music" |
Wretching At The Sight Of The Pregnant |
yet, and won't ever be if we don't come back tomorrow to listen again. |