The fourth Velvet Underground album Loaded opens up with “Who Loves the Sun,” a fun, light, upbeat song, complete with a chorus including backup singers singing “ba-baba-ba.” And a new cover of the song by Matt Berninger and Rosanne Cash is serving as the credits music for the new Hulu series, Sunny Days.
“I’ve been a Trent O’Donnell fan for a long time,” said Berninger. “We became good friends when he cast my brother, Tom, in an episode of his show No Activity, and we’ve had a close, creative bond ever since. When he asked me to cover the Velvet Underground for Sunny Nights, I immediately thought of it as a duet with Rose and John [Leventhal].”
When describing the division of labor in recording the song, Berninger said, “John did most of the work while Rose and I drank chardonnay in the garden in the sun.”
While the song is a pretty straight-ahead version of the song, Berninger’s vocal tone adds some darker qualities not completely missing in the original.
There are few more frictions than when folk start discussing who is the best guitarist ever. It’s guaranteed to produce a bevy of opinions, as ever more effusive hyperbole gets trotted out, ever more fierce grudges dusted down, and ever more unlikely proponents pushed forward. So we won’t go there, other than to comment that Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson was probably in the top few, certainly if you remove the anathema of electricity. (To be fair, he probably had way more electricity than many a blues-rock road warrior, but remained resolutely unplugged the length of his days, 1923 – 2012.) He merited a tribute long ago, and now, with I Am a Pilgrim: Doc Watson at 100, he’s got a fairly worthy one.