The segment that brought us Natasha Bedingfield covering Coldplay has spawned seven compilation albums. Isn't it time for musicians to put those ironic tambourines away?
There are some things that, at the time, seemed unlikely to endure beyond 1999. Films without Tom Hanks. Gary Barlow's career. It still being funny or interesting for an indie band to cover a pop song. But there's no shame in being wrong on every count, so long as there is nothing but unending humiliation for whoever is in charge of maintaining the existence of Radio 1's Live Lounge, the session where taste now goes to die.
Let's recap. Once upon a time, under the tender lunchtime care of Jo Whiley (and now, the permanently anodyne Fearne Cotton), the Live Lounge was the daytime go-to for musicians wanting to show off their shit-hot performance abilities and a sense of humour. So, Arctic Monkeys dropped by and did a sweet – if somewhat off-key – cover of Girls Aloud's hit Love Machine. Will Young was all charm when he sung OutKast's Hey Ya! But it was Travis (Scottish; always rained on them; serial butt of jokes for the unimaginative), who got this raggedy bandwagon rolling with their take on Britney's …Baby One More Time: one of the decade's biggest-selling singles earnestly warbled over an acoustic guitar, by a band who have since gone on to... something equally zeitgeisty.
Really, the novelty pop LOLs should have stopped there. Instead, to Fran Healy's un-credit, that moment has become the gold-standard template for anyone trying to build a bit of credibility through wacky live experimentation. A sentence that in itself should serve as a colossal warning: don't do it. Put that ironic tambourine shake away. What are you trying to prove, Olly Murs, dozying on as Swedish House Mafia? Who told Everything Everything to have a go at Justin Timberlake? How did Jamie Cullum get written permission to do a cover of Pharrell's Frontin'? Why is it still happening?
This is the format that gave us The Scientist, the most boring Coldplay song, as covered by Natasha Bedingfield, a pop star so boring even her record company said so. It promoted the brainmelt that was REM doing a song by Editors, Editors being the Poundshop knock-off of REM. Editors, whose single greatest moment to date has been covering REM's Orange Crush.
And yet, seven Live Lounge compilation albums have been released since 2006. People are genuinely buying them. They're not entirely filled with kooky covers from pop's past, but there's enough of them to explain how Mark Ronson got distracted from being any good whatsoever to making what was the ultimate Live Lounge-inspired album: 2007's The Version (the one with Valerie and all that other faux-funk silliness). Incidentally, Ronson's last album, the one with the criminally underrated Somebody To Love Me, bombed spectacularly.
Listeners: you get everything you deserve. Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.
There are some things that, at the time, seemed unlikely to endure beyond 1999. Films without Tom Hanks. Gary Barlow's career. It still being funny or interesting for an indie band to cover a pop song. But there's no shame in being wrong on every count, so long as there is nothing but unending humiliation for whoever is in charge of maintaining the existence of Radio 1's Live Lounge, the session where taste now goes to die.
Let's recap. Once upon a time, under the tender lunchtime care of Jo Whiley (and now, the permanently anodyne Fearne Cotton), the Live Lounge was the daytime go-to for musicians wanting to show off their shit-hot performance abilities and a sense of humour. So, Arctic Monkeys dropped by and did a sweet – if somewhat off-key – cover of Girls Aloud's hit Love Machine. Will Young was all charm when he sung OutKast's Hey Ya! But it was Travis (Scottish; always rained on them; serial butt of jokes for the unimaginative), who got this raggedy bandwagon rolling with their take on Britney's …Baby One More Time: one of the decade's biggest-selling singles earnestly warbled over an acoustic guitar, by a band who have since gone on to... something equally zeitgeisty.
Really, the novelty pop LOLs should have stopped there. Instead, to Fran Healy's un-credit, that moment has become the gold-standard template for anyone trying to build a bit of credibility through wacky live experimentation. A sentence that in itself should serve as a colossal warning: don't do it. Put that ironic tambourine shake away. What are you trying to prove, Olly Murs, dozying on as Swedish House Mafia? Who told Everything Everything to have a go at Justin Timberlake? How did Jamie Cullum get written permission to do a cover of Pharrell's Frontin'? Why is it still happening?
This is the format that gave us The Scientist, the most boring Coldplay song, as covered by Natasha Bedingfield, a pop star so boring even her record company said so. It promoted the brainmelt that was REM doing a song by Editors, Editors being the Poundshop knock-off of REM. Editors, whose single greatest moment to date has been covering REM's Orange Crush.
And yet, seven Live Lounge compilation albums have been released since 2006. People are genuinely buying them. They're not entirely filled with kooky covers from pop's past, but there's enough of them to explain how Mark Ronson got distracted from being any good whatsoever to making what was the ultimate Live Lounge-inspired album: 2007's The Version (the one with Valerie and all that other faux-funk silliness). Incidentally, Ronson's last album, the one with the criminally underrated Somebody To Love Me, bombed spectacularly.
Listeners: you get everything you deserve. Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.
