George Michael
Iconic in the extreme. How many parodies of this video have there been? It must be one of the most recognisable videos ever and the guitar riff follows being easily recognisable even without the vocals.
There's a pulsating rhythm generated by just the guitar, very little volume to the drums, mainly just something very simple to keep the beat plus a tambourine to jog it along. George Michael's lead vocal is accompanied by a few backing vocals towards the ends of lines and there's a cut to a thin electric guitar solo. read more »
As the new year starts, my main resolution is to continue a resolution from last year. It has the one main aim of keeping me focussed and a side result of being a record of what I've done.
The resolution was two-fold
a) have a simple system for valuing work for a day
b) have a simple system for recording those activities. read more »
Killer introduced many of us to Seal who was able to use it to consolidate his solo career.
Adamski/Seal
Adamski's Killer, not only introduced Seal, but was also Adamski's most popular hit. It was released around the main time for acid and house music and in common with that theme offers hypnotic and repetitive synth rhythms over electronic drums. What made it stand out and become more acceptable to the masses was the speed, being slower than the usual acid tracks and Seal's penetrating vocals. read more »
A bit of a backwards one this time, leading from the cover to the original. Alanis covered her own songs and My Humps, this time she's covering Seal's Crazy
Alanis
This version was recorded for the recent movie The Devil Wears Prada. read more »
In the previous Cover Trail page, Fergie covered Barracuda. In this we'll use My Humps
Black-Eyed Peas
My Humps is a dance song, starting with vocals over a simple hip hop rhythm, almost as the character that Fergie's playing (assuming it's not herself) is answering questions - "What you gonna do with all that junk inside that trunk?" read more »
Take one band and one song, find another band that covered the song. Take one of their songs, find another band and so on. I may find a dead-end where I've come to a band that covered a song but have had none of their own covered. I don't know how long this first trail will go, I haven't planned it.
Right now the first trail is still going, so we'll just see where it ends and the next trail starts.
Want to suggest your own trail, email me or write a comment.
Heart
I like Heart's Barracuda. There are a number of good songs on Little Queen, but this one has always stood out as the best for me, if not Heart's best track. To me, it shows what they could have been doing had they not gone down the AOR route with These Dreams, Alone and similar lightweight radio-friendly tracks. The root is the the driving rhythm of guitars, bass and drums, but even within that there are subtleties in the notes as the guitar and bass regularly play rehearsed fills together. This is an effect that stands out. read more »
