Their Music...In YOUR Hands
So, the X-Factor has finished, and popular songs can breathe a sigh of relief that they won't be subjected to a weekly mauling by over-keen, shiny-eyed Bambis, all trying to impress a man who it is clinically impossible to impress, and his three sneery colleagues. But, if you're going to miss your weekly dose of musical makeover-ation there is a place you can go. Video-sharing sites such as YouTube are riddled with self-made clips of people doing stripped-back covers of their favourite tunes, some with instruments, some a capella, and some sung into a webcam microphone while the original plays in the background.
Which makes it possible to create your very own X-Factor/Britain's Got Talent show, and best of all, you can skip the boring performances!
To get us started (and speaking of the X-Factor), here's luNatica3 doing her version of Leon's version of Rhydian's version of Mariah and Whitney's version of 'When You Believe'. Let's all pretend we're Simon Cowell for a second. What do we think, peoples?
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David Choi has taken the Indie-Validator route, which involves recreating a shiny pop object in the guise of a 'meaningful' guitar-based lament. Normally, this is the kind of thing which winds up pop-lovers enormously (cos it's often kind of patronising to assume that pop songs need to be improved in this manner. A lot of people only felt able to enjoy 'Love Machine' by Girls Aloud when Arctic Monkeys covered it, and that's just silly), but I think this rendition deserves a bit more credit than that. Not least because David's keeping Britney's jittery backbeat going, and also he's giving the vocal some serious 'tude. Nice work!
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Speaking of validating silly old pop songs with grown-up musicality, here's David Sides doing an astonishingly elegant version of 'Umbrella' by Rihanna, which you can also download from his . Beats translating the words into Italian and making a total ari-arse of things, right Mr Potts?
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Mia Rose's version of My Chemical Romance's 'I Don't Love You' is worth the price of admission just for the strange pained look she gives the camera right at the very end.
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The intro to this one made me laugh. Apparently the Chili Peppers didn't do a good enough job on 'Snow' when they wrote it, but luckily The Unborn Band are on hand to fix things. Phew!
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I think FUNandBRI definitely makes the best vocal noise of anyone before their song starts. Whether she keeps that standard up during the performance itself is possibly not for me to say. Anyway, she's doing 'Littlest Things' by Lily Allen, and it's really rather sweet.
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Jiselleroman is doing to last year's X-Factor winner what luNatica3 did to this year's. Yep, it's 'Bleeding Love', the desktop version.
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Here's a lady called Chewwinggum doing the Indie-Validator thing to a song which was pretty mournful in the first place ('Numb' by Linkin Park). Still, a little bit of acoustic pretty instead of shouty gruffness is no bad thing sometimes...
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And finally, my favourite of the lot. This is someone called Rahzel, Godfather of Noise, who has managed to replicate the backing track to Kanye West's 'Jesus Walk's using just his mouth. Now, I don't know if Rahzel is a professional beatboxer or not...actually I don't even know if it's possible to be a professional beatboxer, or what kind of wages you could expect to draw...but he's incredibly impressive.
OK, now if I had a premium-rate phone line to ring, here's where the numbers would be. Sadly all I've got is the comments box, and we don't really want to drag this out over the next 10 weeks or so...SO, by a simple first-past-the-post vote...who's the winner?
NOTE: We don't have to HAVE a winner, obv. Cos there's no prizes. The million-pound recording contract is beyond my meagre means, but I could maybe stretch to a first class stamp*. How would that be?
*Does not include P&P
Comments
Just thought I'd mention -- Rahzel worked with Björk on 'Medulla'.
[Bah! OK, he's disqualified. - Fraser]
Rahzel is indeed a professional beatboxer, he also sings whilst beatboxing- 'If Your Mother Only Knew' is his most famous thingy:
i do not agree with your views on leon jacksons victory! people voted for him because he is genuine. rhydian should not have been in that competition as he was already a trained opera singer. and i dont see what his problem is!! hes got a recording contract already! so its win win for him. leon is a genuine bloke and i feel, along with many others that he is a deserving winner. and he happens to be very cute! now i wouldnt slate a fellow welsh (rhydian) but that man is so arrogant he makes me feel nausious! leon derserved to win. he is gonna go very far. and well if you dont like jazz then thats your problem, people have got different tastes, if you are a jazz hater then change the channel or radio station.
wrong place sorry!
wrong blog sowi :D
Some of these guys are kinda good! Must have been fun going through all the rubbish ones to find them though
I have a soft spot for piano version of songs.. a guy called the Ken used to do Linkin Park ones years ago by ear and I thought he was awesome Can't find his original website without effort but he's on youtube under a different name now.
Ha! Seeing as no one's actually chosen a winner yet i get to.
And i think the Indie-Validator version of Gimme More was awesome.
SO there's your winner!
heyy this is FUNandBRI here. I just found this today. Thanks for putting me up on here.
[OMG! Hello! Nice work, lady! - Fraser
And what exactly is it that I'm doing to Leona Lewis' song that luNatica3 did to this years winner? All I'm doing is having some fun singing a song that I like.
[Yes, that's exactly what I said. I'm not sure how you're getting something nasty from that. - Fraser]