first time i heard this, i though she said "shalom" and that it was an anti-apartheid song.
which brings up a bit of a point. i don't think the comparison is very accurate. and i think it's sort of racist to deny all the work that was being done in south africa by south africans. they let mandela out to prevent a revolution, not to allow one. but the south african movement, nonetheless, had a component in popular media. it had biko, for instance.
don't want to put words into the joy formidable's mouth - it's clear i misinterpreted the track. but that's maybe something for the bds folks to think about.
i actually, think this is the weakest of the four. she's singing it from an emotional distance that the other three don't have, for obvious reasons. i can almost imagine her stumbling around backstage, mumbling something about these fucking children upstaging her or something...
deathtokoalas
i actually think she did a pretty good job with this. it's sombre without being too dramatic.
i'm more confused by the accordian and the four guitars. actually, kim is probably playing bass. still.
Puggle Paws
I think its meant to be like how All Apologies was played on Nirvana; MTV Unplugged. There were several guitars and I think Krist played accordion on it (not sure if it was on all apologies but he played it for a few songs)
deathtokoalas
i think it's a photo-op, and she's probably lip-synching.
Puggle Paws
why do you think that? I think they did it cause they wanted to mix it up instead of having all three songs electric. I don't think she is lip-syncing what would be the purpose of that? I mean Nirvana were very against that sort of thing, If you watch Nirvana's performance "Top of the Pops" smells like teen spirit they made their fake instrument playing obvious as the producers wanted them to play with a backing track sabotaging the thing on purpose.
deathtokoalas
maybe they are making it obvious? the lip synching is a deduction from it being obvious that they're not all playing. st vincent & joan jett do not seem to be playing. kim gordon looks like she might be, and krist looks like he is, but if the others aren't...
Puggle Paws
I will watch it again, kinda writing an essay atm :(. I doubt they would though, doesn't seem like them to do that sort of thing.
deathtokoalas
and, fwiw, i'd bet lorde's management insisted on it, rather than the remnants of nirvana. the other songs were clearly live.
it's just a function of being a commodity.
but i do think she did a good job with it.
Puggle Paws
I did watch it again, I'm not sure, I'm not one to easily pick out lip syncing etc. But to me it doesn't look like a lip sync, I mean at that one pint were she had moved a little away from the mic it was slightly quieter. I'm not sure about the other guitars but Pat, Joan and Kim were definitely playing. Not sure about that st vincent girl, but she probably was.
Mark Humphrey
I think Krist just wanted to crack out the accordion again lol
Alex Driftmier
I agree, it's amazing. This video sucks though, watch it on a good quality tv..and video. She rocks. Suck it.
i think everybody confused by kim gordon's voice should go listen to some sonic youth. start here...
deathtokoalas
nirvana wasn't really from seattle, they were from olympia. i'm not sure if that's what dave was thinking, or if it's sort of like the mccartney thing in the sense that nobody could get it mixed up, but, if it's the latter, i think there's something fitting in it.
i didn't say anything about this performance, though
i think she's a good character actor. not just here, but in general. it's a little different than the others because she's clearly trying to play the part. it's maybe still a sacred cow. but she does it well.
and on this note, somebody that i think would have been interesting would have been ritzy o'brien, maybe something upbeat.
kristaps 5645
haha. I was thinking the same thing. completely agree. tho Nirvana was never about pushing vocal stylistics or image conscious.
Otherworldly Things
You are right. They aren't really from Seattle. They are from Aberdeen, Washington. That is where Kurt and Krist met as teenagers and formed various bands, before settling on the name, Nirvana.
deathtokoalas
the point is that they didn't come out of the seattle rock scene, they came out of the olympia riot grrrl scene. you wouldn't see them playing shows with soundgarden or pearl jam, you'd see them playing shows with bikini kill or l7.
Ecstatic Discharge
They played a couple gigs with Soundgarden but youre right they toured with both L7 and Bikini Kill
newman!
*shakes fist*
courtney hits midlife crisis. which is probably good news, actually. maybe she should call some of her friends up and convince them to go into midlife crisis, too.
the whole idea of midlife crisis has always struck me as sort of backwards. i mean, we spend roughly 30 years defining who we are, then toss it in the trash to conform to some bullshit abstract idealization of what society expects us to be and that's supposed to be some kind of progress in repressing our individualism or something? then, when we connect with who we actually always were, it's presented as some kind of regression? fuck that. if there's any period in our lives that should be called a "crisis" it ought to be the period in the middle when we're trying to run away from ourselves, and the end to that period of crisis ought to be when we finally look ourselves in the eye and realize we always were what we always knew we were in the fucking first place.
or maybe there's a 90s revival happening. who knows.
i like the energy, but it seems a tad contrived. all peaks, no valleys. it'll go over well in a live context, though, and that's probably more important.
and her voice really does sound great, considering what she's put it through.
well, i dunno what the right reaction to this is. i loved michael when i was very little, but it's not a style i've been into over the last roughly 25 years. so, i probably won't listen to it repeatedly...
on first listen, i feel timbaland is doing a pretty good job at capturing certain timbres and aesthetics across his career, even honing in on the right periods, while also uplifting it a little bit with a dubstep and modern pop twist. the initial demoes are also released for purists. could we expect anything more from the tracks? we couldn't, really. it's not new material, so the question "would michael work with timbaland in the early 2010s" is sort of meaningless.
i always preferred michael either in race shattering punk rock mode or in social justice fuck the fuckers mode, and this is low on either of those aspects in favour of love songs. that's a reflection of the material, of course.
further, you can tell that a lot of these are outtakes because the tracks tend to repeat aimlessly after the midway point. when it's not clear they aren't fully written, it's mostly clear they were abandoned...
high points: "a place with no name", "do you know where your children are", "xscape".
jackson's work was mostly....ummm..."collaborative"....as long as he's singing, it's not that different than the real thing.
but, being pasted together from outtakes over 30 years, the album couldn't possibly flow well.
