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Welcome to SeeDarkly Sunday DisCOVERies:
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
We continue with this month's special feature: April Absurdities! Four wildly ridiculous covers in concept, style, or just the artists involved. Additionally, every song this month has degree of connection to our favorite prankster/absurdist musician, Weird Al Yankovic! (I'm not telling you how, but you can decipher those connections on your own.)
Today's Second Sunday Slowly downtempo cover transforms a lusty pop dance classic from the eighties into a raspy and mournful dark folk tribute to the master of erotic despair!:
Discohen – Like A Virgin (Madonna)
The origins of Like A Virgin begin in a pickup truck driven by songwriter Billy Steinberg who was contemplating the recent end of a problematic relationship while enjoying the hopeful start of another. Steinberg took the lyrics to his songwriting partner Tom Kelly who, at first, thought it should be crafted as a slow ballad. Steinberg convinced him that wasn't the best approach. The completed song was turned down by most artists and labels, due to its title and lyrical content, until Madonna's label brought it to her. When she performed it in September at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards with then scandalous and sexually provocative choreography, Steinberg and Kelly thought the song was destined for disaster. However, after she released the single that Halloween as the title track for her upcoming second album, it became her first number one hit. It was plagued with controversy nonetheless due to Christian groups that believed her name and the song were blasphemous of the virgin mother Mary, despite the fact her name was coincidental and she hadn't even written the song.
The song has been covered over sixty nine times since 1984. The first cover, in 1985, was from the gothic post-punk band Lords of the New Church. The most recent was released this year by Mötley Crüe with a rendition that sounds an awful lot like an unintended parody of itself.
Discohen is a project from out of the Netherlands whose objective is to bring life to "disco classics the way Leonard Cohen would perform them." In early October 2015, they released their first collection of covers, P0pular P0sitions; the title an homage to Cohen's penultimate 2014 album, Popular Problems. Discohen, in an uncanny impersonation of Cohen's voice and style, reinvents hits from Anita Ward, Donna Summer, KISS, Thelma Houston, Rod Stewart, Olivia Newton John, and of course, Madonna.
Singer Teije Venema said in one interview, "From the start, the idea was that we would make a sex album together. Let me put it this way: the intention was for us to release a record with which you could masturbate yourself to sleep crying."
In their take on Like A Virgin, what once sounded like a shameless celebration of sexual awakening now sounds like a menacing doom march toward the loss of innocence in a darkly humorous reversal of tone. It's entirely possible they've achieved their goal.:
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
We go from diva to divo with a Third Sunday Throwback Absurdity from the twentieth century that glories in the death of a wicked witch while tragically memorializing the death of a new wave operatic contra tenor.
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome! You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.
(And if, after 207 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip if you like...)
Thanks for reading and keep exploring the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Apr 07 - Front Line Assembly w/ Jimmy Urine – Rock Me Amadeus (Falco)
Mar 31 - Dicepeople – Strangelove (Depeche Mode)
Mar 24 - Cylab – Heart-Shaped Box (Nirvana)
Mar 17 - Strawberry Switchblade – Jolene (Dolly Parton)
Mar 10 - Kaleida – A Forest (The Cure)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
We continue with this month's special feature: April Absurdities! Four wildly ridiculous covers in concept, style, or just the artists involved. Additionally, every song this month has degree of connection to our favorite prankster/absurdist musician, Weird Al Yankovic! (I'm not telling you how, but you can decipher those connections on your own.)
Today's Second Sunday Slowly downtempo cover transforms a lusty pop dance classic from the eighties into a raspy and mournful dark folk tribute to the master of erotic despair!:
Discohen – Like A Virgin (Madonna)
The origins of Like A Virgin begin in a pickup truck driven by songwriter Billy Steinberg who was contemplating the recent end of a problematic relationship while enjoying the hopeful start of another. Steinberg took the lyrics to his songwriting partner Tom Kelly who, at first, thought it should be crafted as a slow ballad. Steinberg convinced him that wasn't the best approach. The completed song was turned down by most artists and labels, due to its title and lyrical content, until Madonna's label brought it to her. When she performed it in September at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards with then scandalous and sexually provocative choreography, Steinberg and Kelly thought the song was destined for disaster. However, after she released the single that Halloween as the title track for her upcoming second album, it became her first number one hit. It was plagued with controversy nonetheless due to Christian groups that believed her name and the song were blasphemous of the virgin mother Mary, despite the fact her name was coincidental and she hadn't even written the song.
The song has been covered over sixty nine times since 1984. The first cover, in 1985, was from the gothic post-punk band Lords of the New Church. The most recent was released this year by Mötley Crüe with a rendition that sounds an awful lot like an unintended parody of itself.
Discohen is a project from out of the Netherlands whose objective is to bring life to "disco classics the way Leonard Cohen would perform them." In early October 2015, they released their first collection of covers, P0pular P0sitions; the title an homage to Cohen's penultimate 2014 album, Popular Problems. Discohen, in an uncanny impersonation of Cohen's voice and style, reinvents hits from Anita Ward, Donna Summer, KISS, Thelma Houston, Rod Stewart, Olivia Newton John, and of course, Madonna.
Singer Teije Venema said in one interview, "From the start, the idea was that we would make a sex album together. Let me put it this way: the intention was for us to release a record with which you could masturbate yourself to sleep crying."
In their take on Like A Virgin, what once sounded like a shameless celebration of sexual awakening now sounds like a menacing doom march toward the loss of innocence in a darkly humorous reversal of tone. It's entirely possible they've achieved their goal.:
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
We go from diva to divo with a Third Sunday Throwback Absurdity from the twentieth century that glories in the death of a wicked witch while tragically memorializing the death of a new wave operatic contra tenor.
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome! You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.
(And if, after 207 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip if you like...)
Thanks for reading and keep exploring the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Apr 07 - Front Line Assembly w/ Jimmy Urine – Rock Me Amadeus (Falco)
Mar 31 - Dicepeople – Strangelove (Depeche Mode)
Mar 24 - Cylab – Heart-Shaped Box (Nirvana)
Mar 17 - Strawberry Switchblade – Jolene (Dolly Parton)
Mar 10 - Kaleida – A Forest (The Cure)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .