poptimists | Har har that's byebyepride's birthday present sorted.

I'm trying to imagine some way this won't be awful but I just can't. Am looking forward to hearing the "Breaking Free" cover.

I've already heard Petra Haden's version of 'Don't Stop Believing' and I like it, but I didn't realise it was anything to do with this - this definitely seems like the kind of thing where if individual tracks are taken on their own merit they might be good, but the whole endeavour overall is clearly in a VERY ANNOYING spirit.

Yeah, I think Petra's not necessarily contributing the song in the spirit of the project. Wish she'd actually sung the prechorus though.

Haha I thought that originally said that Joanna Newsom would be covering 'Viva Forever'! I do not know what Jim O'Rourke sounds like and do not want to.

This isn't as annoying as it could be because I've barely heard of any of the indie artists involved so can't imagine what they'd sound like desecrating Destiny's Child et al - also because half their "guilty pleasures" are rubbish anyway.

I titled this before I even saw Alex blowing a fuse on it on ILM (I had assumed that thread was about trashing stuff onstage!)

I wasn't sure if I was just trolling or not. Clearly I am so far gone in irony that I have lost my true self!!

My intemperate response on an ILM thread:

"WHAT THE FUCK WITH THE GUILTY PLEASURES SHIT.

I bet every one of those originals is better than ANYTHING ever done by any of those bands!

Viva Forever is better than anything by Jim O'Rourke AND Sonic Youth combined.

I FEEL GUILTY ABOUT LIKING WILL OLDHAM. [ha ha sorry pot80!]Perhaps when the Spice Girls reform they will cover Gulf Shore Blues."

But TBH, I'm bored of caring. Perhaps some of these will be improvements. I doubt it, but it's possible.

Oops, meant to unitalicise the bracket reference to

pot80. That wasn't on ILM.

Anyway, I like some of Jim O'Rourke's stuff, and some of it is totally channelling 70s AM rock into avant circles, without guilt or whatever. I guess different people on this record will have different motivations. Selling it on the guilt thing is sh!tty because it just reinforces prejudicial social attitudes to music which very few people actually have, I bet, but which they might be tempted to reach for in organising their discussion of music. (IF THEY ARE K-LAME.)

ha ha Sonic Youth -- 'there's always been a bubblegum element to our sound'

I'm disappointed at some of the song choices. Everyone and their dog has covered Back For Good, it's a relief that '...Baby One More Time' isn't on there. The artist roster looks better than that Radio 1 One Love album that came out a few years back, though. I'm intrigued to hear what 'Chop Suey' sounds like...

more importantly, when did wasis become a "guilty pleasure"????

also the best band to cover chop suey would be THE WURZELS obv, as it contains the line "CIDER, IN CIDER"

On this evidence, Petra Haden = The Flying Pickets = The Essence Of Pop!

Stop them before they kill again.

(In descending order: The Oldham is bearable when he's not singing. The Petra Haden* is bearable when she's not singing. [I made a funny.] The Devandra is bearable for the two seconds the piano sounds like the opening chords to "Imagine." [That is not the highest compliment I've ever given anything.]) (I've actually half-liked a thing or two by Oldham in the past.)

(OK, just listened to Porter Block's MySpace and they are somewhat pop already in a Green Dayish way except a lot lot lot wankier and more rueful and worse and I wouldn't want Green Day to sing "Breaking Free" either, but it's possible they'll give something to the song. "Breaking Free" is far and away the best thing on High School Musical.)

*But on the evidence of her MySpace, ruining other people's song seems to be what she does.

devandra = devendra

It boils down to this for me:

All Saints cover Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Pet Shop Boys cover U2 => hurrah, who knew anything by them could be transformed into something good?

Vice versa: Aargh, keep it away from me.

On the other hand I thought Sonic Youth's Into The Groove was at least a quarter as good as the Madonna, and is probably my favourite SY record ever, though admittedly I'm not much of a fan, so I wouldn't necessarily stick with that idea.

You know, I really don't mind this album. The spin the PR is putting on it is horrible, of course, but more than bad press releases, I hate the covers most bands choose to do. They're usually record-collector power plays rather than good artistic ideas--"ooh look at this obscure track I know about and totally appreciate." This is a good list of covers, and depending on how they're executed, I would love to see more like it. OK, I would have picked different songs by some of the artists being covered, and maybe different bands to cover them, but I love those CDs of punk bands covering pop songs, and I like that there are actually current acts being covered here. I think doing covers of your contemporaries is one way of erasing that idea of influences we were talking about, and, as people have suggested, I bet a decent portion (I'd say 8 or 9 of the 15) of these are being done "unironically" or whatever.

That said, WHY ARE THERE NOT MORE DISCO COVERS.

(Uh also, how does one post to poptimists? Assuming I've tried changing the "Post to" field and "Poptimists" is not available.)

Are you a member of Poptimists or just a "watcher"? If the former you can post.

> WHY ARE THERE NOT MORE DISCO COVERS

Because anyone with such good taste as to want to cover a disco track realises they cannot improve upon perfection :-)

Oh sorry, I meant "people covering songs, of whatever genre, in a disco style."

Wtf? Is the criteria for 'guilty pleasure' just 'not plinky plonky indie?'

Har har that's byebyepride's birthday present sorted.

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Google cache is my friend

Re: Google cache is my friend

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