So in tonights episode of Alexs adventures in cover songs, That Awkward Moment When A Brit-Synth-Pop Song You Remember From Junior High Has Somehow Become an American Country Music Standard. Remember Life in a Northern Town? https://youtube/watch?v=X5uxQElYu68 Remember it now? You may not know this, but it was apparently a Top 40 hit for the Country Music act Sugarland in 2008. I mean maybe you know that, but I had no idea - I apparently am pretty out of touch with the American pop music scene in general. So Im going to link to their version (be warned - its deep deep new country - Here Be Dragons... In Pick-up Trucks) but if youre like me, and you remember the original, its really kind of fascinating. Cause what I remember about Life in a Northern Town (and you can see it so clearly in the original video) is that its so strongly a song about the North of England - its so obviously about Leeds or Machester or Liverpool, with its Salvation Army band and all of the work shut down. https://youtube/watch?v=fv6cHeG1krg But you listen to Sugarland do this, and watch Jennifer Nettles (the first spotlighted singer - who, I admit, sings with such an evident rapture that I would forgive her much) singing about the self-same Salvation Army Band, and the lemonade... and then at 1:16 theres Kristian Bush in his monster Stetson intoning Life in a Northern Town in his Georgia drawl and its so clearly like... a dying coal town in Kentucky or West Virginia. And at 2:22 he gets in that little flourish they shut the factory down (in America its not necessary to specify all the work, if youre talking small town - just say The Factory and everyone knows what you mean) and its so clearly a paen to the death of small town America, which is of course such a central theme of the country genre and then how could it not have always been a country song? ...and a part of my adolescence (I mean not a big part, but a part) has been pulled out, twisted 90 degrees and jammed back in again... its fascinating. Incidentally, if you are willing to indulge one more similar cover, Sugarland (which, I must stress, is only the two people who start downstage in the Northern Town video - not any of the various Barbie and Ken dolls upstage behind them) do a rather sweet Come on Eileen too: https://youtube/watch?v=TMDqkBjvdMg You can make out what theyre singing much better than the original, which makes it seem like a more affecting song. Oh - and, the find that started it all, Sara Bareilles rather dirge-like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. https://youtube/watch?v=Ozd2ja7mAgM
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 03:57:51 +0000
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