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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.
Looking for something previously featured? Click here.
I tried to find a way to stick to a wintery/holiday theme... and I have a specific song I'd love to be discussing but there just isn't a good enough cover of it for me to justify the indulgence. As it turns out, there is a passing connection to the theme by way of an artist who hosts an annual Home for the Holidays benefit concert to aid homeless LGBTQ youths. Since that event happens Tuesday, (where said artist will receive the first High Note Global Prize for her work in LGBTQ advocacy,) let's take some time to check out this downtempo synthwave cover of her first number one hit for this month's Second Sunday Slowly:
Gunship – Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)
Cyndi Lauper released her debut solo album She's So Unusual in October 1983. Time After Time was released as the second single from the album in January 1984. Interestingly, it was the first number one hit of her career, not Girls Just Want To Have Fun which only reached number two on the charts despite being a better selling international multi-platinum success over time.
Time After Time was the last song written for the album and was constructed as a pretty straight forward love song about commitment and loyalty with not a lot of specific inspiration. The titular lyric was inspired from little more than a program listing in a TV Guide for the 1979 film Time After Time, starring Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells hunting Jack the Ripper in the twentieth century. However the inspiration ends with the title and the song shares nothing more than coincidentally relevant to the film otherwise. It's not clear if Lauper has even seen it.
In 2005, Lauper reworked the song as an acoustic duet with Sarah McLachlan (who will perform with her this Tuesday at the aforementioned holiday benefit concert) for her hits compilation, The Body Acoustic.
Time After Time has been featured in several films and had over two hundred covers of it done by a variety of artists spanning multiple genres over the last thirty-five years.
One of the latest covers comes from the British synthwave project Gunship who included their version on their album Dark All Day, released in October 2018. In an AMA on Reddit, lead vocalist Alex Westaway said the cover came to be "with a bit of trepidation" because "it's such a huge song." He continued, "I was messing around on the piano and stumbled across notes that sounded like Time After Time, sung a couple of lines and it felt pretty cool. It then escalated into a full blown GS track."
Gunship tend toward a cinematic style of outrun retro synthwave, offering an atmospheric opening to the song building the melody until dropping their downtempo rhythms in after the first refrain of the chorus. In its way it feels quite a bit like traveling through time to revisit the era for an exploration of what might have been if only..:
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Third Sunday Throwback to the Twentieth Century! I'll be honest, apart from the regularly scheduled weekly themes, I've been truly indecisive about what to pick until the day before so... feel free to make requests in the comments.
While you're there, tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... always welcome! You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to reply below, but all replies are screened for spam prevention.
I've at least two gigs this week, both are a not as dark as you'd find on the whole of this blog, but you'll find some of these tracks there. Also have some Albany based goth/industrial specific events planned for 2020 and more to come. Details can be found on my schedule as well as other updates soon!
(And if, after 4+ years and 240 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, consider leaving me a tip in the form of the gift of music and get me something from my wishlist on Bandcamp if you like. It'll go to good use! Thanks!)
Thanks for reading and keep dancing in darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Dec 01 - She Wants Revenge – Hazy Shade of Winter (Simon & Garfunkel)
Nov 24 - Seer of the Merciful Own – One Week (Barenaked Ladies)
Nov 17 - Attrition– Underpass [click, click, drone] (John Foxx)
Nov 10 - Simple Minds – Teardrop (Massive Attack)
Nov 03 - Horrorfall – Juke Joint Jezebel (KMFDM)
. 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.
Looking for something previously featured? Click here.
I tried to find a way to stick to a wintery/holiday theme... and I have a specific song I'd love to be discussing but there just isn't a good enough cover of it for me to justify the indulgence. As it turns out, there is a passing connection to the theme by way of an artist who hosts an annual Home for the Holidays benefit concert to aid homeless LGBTQ youths. Since that event happens Tuesday, (where said artist will receive the first High Note Global Prize for her work in LGBTQ advocacy,) let's take some time to check out this downtempo synthwave cover of her first number one hit for this month's Second Sunday Slowly:
Gunship – Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)
Cyndi Lauper released her debut solo album She's So Unusual in October 1983. Time After Time was released as the second single from the album in January 1984. Interestingly, it was the first number one hit of her career, not Girls Just Want To Have Fun which only reached number two on the charts despite being a better selling international multi-platinum success over time.
Time After Time was the last song written for the album and was constructed as a pretty straight forward love song about commitment and loyalty with not a lot of specific inspiration. The titular lyric was inspired from little more than a program listing in a TV Guide for the 1979 film Time After Time, starring Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells hunting Jack the Ripper in the twentieth century. However the inspiration ends with the title and the song shares nothing more than coincidentally relevant to the film otherwise. It's not clear if Lauper has even seen it.
In 2005, Lauper reworked the song as an acoustic duet with Sarah McLachlan (who will perform with her this Tuesday at the aforementioned holiday benefit concert) for her hits compilation, The Body Acoustic.
Time After Time has been featured in several films and had over two hundred covers of it done by a variety of artists spanning multiple genres over the last thirty-five years.
One of the latest covers comes from the British synthwave project Gunship who included their version on their album Dark All Day, released in October 2018. In an AMA on Reddit, lead vocalist Alex Westaway said the cover came to be "with a bit of trepidation" because "it's such a huge song." He continued, "I was messing around on the piano and stumbled across notes that sounded like Time After Time, sung a couple of lines and it felt pretty cool. It then escalated into a full blown GS track."
Gunship tend toward a cinematic style of outrun retro synthwave, offering an atmospheric opening to the song building the melody until dropping their downtempo rhythms in after the first refrain of the chorus. In its way it feels quite a bit like traveling through time to revisit the era for an exploration of what might have been if only..:
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Third Sunday Throwback to the Twentieth Century! I'll be honest, apart from the regularly scheduled weekly themes, I've been truly indecisive about what to pick until the day before so... feel free to make requests in the comments.
While you're there, tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... always welcome! You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to reply below, but all replies are screened for spam prevention.
I've at least two gigs this week, both are a not as dark as you'd find on the whole of this blog, but you'll find some of these tracks there. Also have some Albany based goth/industrial specific events planned for 2020 and more to come. Details can be found on my schedule as well as other updates soon!
(And if, after 4+ years and 240 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, consider leaving me a tip in the form of the gift of music and get me something from my wishlist on Bandcamp if you like. It'll go to good use! Thanks!)
Thanks for reading and keep dancing in darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Dec 01 - She Wants Revenge – Hazy Shade of Winter (Simon & Garfunkel)
Nov 24 - Seer of the Merciful Own – One Week (Barenaked Ladies)
Nov 17 - Attrition– Underpass [click, click, drone] (John Foxx)
Nov 10 - Simple Minds – Teardrop (Massive Attack)
Nov 03 - Horrorfall – Juke Joint Jezebel (KMFDM)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .