Every so often, a cover manages to simultaneously be so delightfully weird and so faithful to the original that one can’t help but receive it as an instant classic. Alien Tango‘s take on The Beatles‘ “Getting Better” is such a track.
Alien Tango — aka Alberto García — wades into the song with a vibey electronic ambience and drum kit before diving into vocals that feel like an operatic stoner-Dracula for the metamodern millennial age. You can really feel the lyrics in the performance, both in the mixed-bag hopefulness of the chorus and the contrasting lamentations of the past. Rather than feeling gimmicky or discordant, there’s a kind of transcendence to the way all the elements come together. The music video only heightens this, a glam dance performance in dressed-down Sgt. Pepper regalia shot on 16mm film over the Thames at sunrise. The lyrics of the third verse are replaced with horns and whistling, and the substitution only serves to further the cover’s message.
Alien Tango purports to be transmitting classics from a parallel timeline, and this song certainly validates that claim—we hope more covers (or, covers recognizable as such in this timeline) are yet to come.
Check out many more Beatles covers here!
