| ***
It was by a series of unfortunate events that I came across this. I would not have under normal circumstances, but at the time of writing, the standard at the top of the chart is unbearably low. From this, a couple of things happened which made me discover, (among several other songs) the original track, which to me stood out amongst all those that were unfamiliar to me at the time. So much so that I gave it a number of additional plays. This version came to my attention from several other viewers who had commented on the fact that they had experienced the opposite scenario to me, that is that they had known this version and had no idea that the original existed. And so that led me to this version.
Covers are always an interesting thing, sometimes it pays to do a straight interpretation, but a unique spin, while being a risky endeavor, can either come across as brilliant, or utterly terrible. All that is redundant and irrelevent however as this is a fairl straight interpretation, which means it will hold the dubious problem of not being able to match the original. Although with the approximate decade gap between the releases, it could perhaps serve as a vessel for many to discover it.
As for the song, it's a great song, better than I expected. As for the cover, it's okay, but as I mentioned briefly before, it doesn't quite hit the same mark as the original, which makes it utterly useless as listening material for me. The good thing is that it wasn't released as a single, which would have just exacerbated debates about comparing the two, which is really annoying. That's not the case though, so yay!
The scream during the chorus in particular doesn't quite cut it in comparison to the original, which costs it a little bit. As it truly is a quintessential part of the song's overall expression of emotion, and an important part of the song in general. My general issue with covers is that, apart from being lazy by stealing already made lyrics, melody & familiarity without any effort, they take away the real emotional meaning from the original songwriter, who might be writing their own thoughts, or even an autobiographical account of a past event, since the cover artist is not the same person, the cover lacks the same real meaning.
Because it was not released as a single, there is no music video for me to disect within a paragraph or so, and any attempt at making a paragraph that even comes remotely close to staying on the topic of the music video while adding a ridiculously large amount of padding to avoid coming up with genuine content while still increasing the length of this ever increasing in size paragraph, will almost certainly be seen as filler in any review, be it an industry one, or just a general fan of music. The same could be said of the track's inclusion on the album! With that I've potentially gone full circle, or I've just completely forgotten what that actually means. Either way, I've still written more words.
Now, to seemlessly without delay get back on track with the review without filling it up with any more needless filler, which would be silly of me, I shall continue to discuss the quality of the track. As far as The Veronicas go for me, most of their tracks are in the three star range, with very few lying above or below it. This is yet another three star track from them, which is a shame since that'd be a drop down from the score of the original, should I ever get to reviewing it although it is not on my horizon of tracks to review at this moment, it very well could be in the coming weeks or months. Going back on relative quality, this is about par for them, but if I were to choose a Veronicas track to listen to, this would be disproportionately higher on the list than it's quality suggests. This is despite the aforementioned fact that it is a null listen for me as far as music goes, but conversely, the opposite applies when isolating just Veronicas tracks. The sheer amount of intrigue this has makes it one of their more interesting tracks to listen to. Especially when you compare it to "This Love", which can only be described as run of the mill and just okay. But I don't think anyone wants to read a two page essay on my opinion on that track, so I'll leave the description for it at that. I will however continue my dissection on this track.
I am yet to hear the album in full so despite me already dismissing this as filler, I may change my opinion on that, should I hear the rest of the album. But at the time of writing this review, that remains my opinion, and judging by the chances of me ever getting through the whole album, it will likely not change, but who knows?
Covers are a tough thing to come up with content to write about. Comments about the song in general are usually left for the original, so with a cover, you can only really comment on comparisons between the two. It is for this reason that I have been noticeably brief in my analysis. Were this an original track, I probably would have elaborated more, rather than doing a quick and lazy review as I have noticably done here.
To avoid this review being completely negative, I will say bravo to whoever decided to make this track happen. The thing that makes it interesting, is that while it doesn't quite have the right genre, it still sounds normal as a Veronicas track, and is all in all, an interesting song to cover. Although with all things considered, I still will repeat ad nauseum that it just doesn't rate compared to the original, and I don't think any other cover could. That being said, I recommend any fans of the original to check this out of pure intrigue as I did, and any fans of this track should check out the original as well, as it is a classic track.
All in all, this song and this review has been an interesting venture for me, but I must conclude this review, while giving this song the appropriate amount of stars for its quality relative to that of other pieces of contemporary music, and like most Veronicas tracks, that score is a solid three stars, which means I have no problem listening to it, but it isn't really a favourite of mine that would be found on my music playlists, still an alright track though. |
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