This week's Remix Sunday brings you José González's excellent cover of Massive Attack's epic 'Teardrop', from their 1998 album Mezzanine. It's hard to believe that Mezzanine was released almost 10 years ago, but today the album enjoys an almost iconic status. In fact, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 412 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
It's nice that the José González version is as beautiful and wistful as the original. I'm a big fan of previous González covers ('Heartbeats', anyone?) and his original work is really starting to win me over as well. The Swedish singer/songwriter's second album, In Our Nature, was released on September 25th and is quite a gem. I've been on a real Swedish kick lately, but our Scandanavian friends can certainly deliver some quality music. I'll endeavour to share some more secrets from Sweden in the days and weeks ahead.
Neat fact about 'Teardrop': The original version of the song features vocals by Elizabeth Fraser (of the Cocteau Twins). Fraser's vocal part was recorded just after she was given the news that Jeff Buckley, with whom she had a close personal relationship, was missing in the Wolf River of Memphis, Tennessee (high five to Wikipedia for that little tidbit). Creepy.
- a.m.p.m.
Massive Attack - Teardrop
From In Our Nature:
3 comments:
this was one of my first introductions to bridging the atlantic and i must say i am very impressed. this is one of my favorite massive attack songs and it has been secretly hidden away on my mp3 player for quite some time now, the jose gonzalez version is quite up to par and its interesting to note that the friday previous to this entry my roommates had just introduced me to him via his cover of the knife's heartbeats on the sony bravia commercial (all the lovely bouncy balls) keep up the good work and ill be sure to be checking you guys out regularly from now on
thanks for the kind words.
we at BTA also really love gonzalez's covers of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.". check 'em out if you haven't heard them yet.
Not to forget José's take on Kylie Minogues "Hand On Your Heart", which far surpasses the original, IMHO
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