Sunday, November 01, 2009

The Cover Session #7

Listening to: 'Help Yourself' by Amy Winehouse [Frank]

One of my favourite genres of music is soul. I don't mind if it's Motown, Chicago or blue-eyed soul, I love it all. I'm not sure when I got into it...but I have a feeling my neighbour playing The Commodores full blast every Sunday morning when I was growing up had something to do with it!

The song I've chosen to cover this time was co-written by Carole King, and originally performed by The Shirelles. It's been covered gazillions of times from the '60s up until this year - the Wikipedia entry for the song has a list. I've heard a few of them - notably those by Dusty Springfield and Carole King herself...but the original and the Dusty version are too fast for my liking, and the Carole King version I find a bit frilly (for lack of a better word). The only version I've heard that manages to capture the vulnerability depicted in the lyrics is, unsurprisingly, by Amy Winehouse.

I love Amy Winehouse. I think she's an amazingly gifted musician. Her Back to Black album is possibly my favourite out of all the albums I own. I remember playing it in the car for my parents when I was home last year (after the "careful, the language and themes aren't very family-friendly" warning)...they loved it, and my mother said she could hear the sadness in Amy's voice. I really really hope the next album (scheduled for release next year) lives upto expectations...goodness knows she's had enough of drama in the past two years to get some lyrical inspiration!

Anyway, back to the song. I knew I wouldn't be able to do Amy's version justice, so I kinda made it a bit more '60s-esque (I hope) with the harmony and the tempo...along the lines of this version by Brenda Lee. So here is my rendition of 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow' by The Shirelles (and Amy Winehouse, amongst others). Enjoy!


If you want to listen to it offline, you can download it here. I can't believe it's taken me this long to get another cover done! Ah well, better late than never :-). There's a bit of distortion in places and you might need to turn the volume up a bit...hopefully all these technical hitches will be sorted out for the next cover, whenever that is.

Right, now it's time for bed. Or rather, it was time for bed a while back. Sigh.

6 comments:

  1. duuuuuuuhhhhhdddd, this has got to be my favourite cover by you!!! :O

    good work Pseudo! :D I really hope the next cover won't take as long... :)

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  2. niiiiice....!! loved the harmony, spot on :D

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  3. GG, Sabby - thank you! Glad you liked it :-)

    Chavie - seriously? Cool :-) Hehe yeah I'll try and do another one before xmas.

    Gehan - thanks! :D I really wanted to get an authentic sound for the harmony, so I'm glad it worked! :-)

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  4. I just listened to this again and AGAIN, so beautiful ♥

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