Nov 252024
 
fionn toxicity

Musora is a music education company in British Columbia. I know them from their Drumeo brand’s YouTube channel where famous drummers teach drumming. What I like, though are the videos where these famous drummers try to play along to songs they’ve never heard before. Basically, they listen to a song without the drum track and have to make up their own drum part on the spot. It’s a fun way of showing off the musical talent of the drummer while also showing their human side.

Now Musora itself has a series of videos riffing off the Drumeo idea, with an artist coming in to their studio, listening to a song they don’t know (or don’t know well) and covering it on the spot. The latest video is pop duo Fionn (also from BC), made up of twin sisters, covering System of a Down‘s “Toxicity.” Obviously the song is outside their wheelhouse and only one member of the backing band is able to identify the song to start. Continue reading »

Oct 312018
 
cover songs october
AJ Lambert – Lush Life (Frank Sinatra cover)

Frank Sinatra’s granddaughter covers Frank Sinatra. You think you know where this story ends: fawning nepotism. But despite familial loyalty, A.J. Lambert isn’t afraid to twist “Lush Life,” adding a Lynchian undercurrent of menace. More of an overcurrent in the crawling, nose-bleeding video.

Amy Shark – Teenage Dirtbag (Wheatus cover)

Every month, one or two of these selections invariably hail from Spotify’s terrific new cover-sessions series. My only gripe is that they came with no information, the sort a band would write in the YouTube description or press release announcing a new cover, or say on stage before performing one live. That’s now solved with Spotify’s new “Under Cover” podcast, in which the artists performing the covers talk about them. We learn that Amy Shark tried to make “Teenage Dirtbag” a Pixies song, and that she considered the song her anthem when she was young. She says: “The first time I heard ‘Teenage Dirtbag,’ I was in high school. I was crazy obsessed with it to the point where it was in my head every day all day. I would sing it in all day in school. Even teachers would say, ‘Amy, please listen to something else.'” Continue reading »