Expletive, expletive, expletive...
OH HELLS NO!
First Tom Waits, now Jeff Buckley?!
Scarlett Johansson must be stopped before she sucks the life out of another beautiful song.
She did a cover of "Last Goodbye," one of Buckley's most beautiful, evocative, theatrical songs and drained it of everything that made it so incredible. The breathy, monotone "sexy" voice, the jazz bar piano, just...no. It sounds like bad Sara Bareilles.
I tried to have a good attitude about it at first, thinking, "Okay, she's got good taste anyways...Maybe this won't be terrible..." It wasn't for the first 30 seconds. After that, the whole track is anemic, for lack of a better word. It was completely exsanguinated, actually. There is no passion, no soul, and nothing exceptional about her voice. She halfheartedly tried to make it her own, but her variation on it wavered between trying to stay in harmony with the original and flattening it at the end where the bulk of the drama of the song occurs. It didn't have to be an exact replica for it to be good, because half the fun of covers are that the artist covering it brings something different them, but in my opinion, if you're going to take someone as beloved as Jeff Buckley and try to make it your own, you better come through with something really special.
This wasn't it.
If she TOUCHES Leonard Cohen, I may have to cut her.
Check it out, if you want some Orwellian 2 minute hate action...
1 imaginary victoria said on January 30, 2009
"exsanguinated" = best imaginary word EVER.
2 ChrisB said on January 30, 2009
I dunno. I bought ScarJo's Tom Waits album and didn't think it was all that bad. She's an okay singer but she certainly didn't soil his legacy in any way. She's got a decent voice with limited range but overall unremarkable.
Still, I don't see why we're complaining about a sincere cover when people are still performing ironic covers. Ben Gibbard laughing his way through an Avril Lavigne song bothers me far more than ScarJo singing a Jeff Buckley song, however earnestly.
Besides, Vanilla Ice couldn't ruin "Under Pressure" from Queen. Why are we bothered what Scarlett Johansson does with Jeff Buckley? It isn't like he's around to complain about it - and even if he were, I doubt he'd mind.
On another note, I can't help but laugh every time I read Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide on Grace (for what it's worth, I think Buckley was a better swimmer than he was a musician). Christgau wrote, "Although Tim's vocal traces are in his genes as surely as John's are in Julian's, it's wrong to peg him as the unwelcome ghost of his overwrought dad. Young Jeff is a syncretic asshole, beholden to Zeppelin and Nina Simone and Chris Whitley and the Cocteau Twins and his mama--your mama too if you don't watch out. 'Sensitivity isn't being wimpy,' he avers. 'It's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom.' So let us pray the force of hype blows him all the way to Uranus."
3 Imaginary Mimi said on January 30, 2009
Fair enough, ChrisB- I totally understand and appreciate your comment, especially the Ben Gibbard part- well played, sir. I might also add that Vanilla Ice didn't cover "Under Pressure," he sampled it (well, he says he didn't), which I think makes a huge difference. Grace is one of my favorite albums, and I am not a Johannson-as-a-singer fan (or really as an actress, actually). For me, at least this cover is kinda like "Hey, I realllllly want creme brulee, but someone just handed me a sugar-free Jello pudding cup."
I agree, dude obviously had some control issues with his singing styles, and he almost effectively wrecks many of his songs with his weird screamy, overwrought endings (i.e. the title track Grace- STUNNING, but then he almost kills it with that out of control ending), but MY GOD his lyrics are beautiful. Take the opening line from "So Real":
"Love, let me sleep tonight on your couch, and remembmer the smell of your simple city dress..."
C'mon! That's poetry, baby!
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