McLovin
Over the past few months, there has only been one young female performer that people have been talking about: 13 year old Rebecca Black. Her debut song Friday has been parodied, analysed and scrutinised; but above all, it has been watched over 100 million times. There is even a (brilliant) Glee version, surely the quickest release-to-cover-version the programme has ever produced.
Over in the UK however, 14 year old Jasmine Van den Bogaerde aka Birdy has been firmly lodged in the charts for most of the year with her moving cover of Bon Iver's Skinny Love. Demonstrating a tenderness and restraint that defies her age, Birdy evokes the piano-led singles of early Kate Bush, as well as the world-weary sageness of Joni Mitchell. Her delicate reading of Skinny Love highlights the song's fragility and offers a clarity to the lyrics which are deliberately obscured in the Bon Iver original. Its extended chart run is a ray of light in the currently rather dismal charts; a world where Bruno Mars gets to number one with The Lazy Song (has a song ever been more appropriately titled?) and Pitbull gets to number one with ANYTHING is not a world I want to live in. (Slightly melodramatic? Yes, but also very true).
Having celebrated her 15th Birthday earlier this week, I'm surprised Birdy's understated success hasn't been brought to further attention. It seems that people are more eager to ridicule Rebecca Black's naff, silly, but nevertheless harmless Friday than praise an effortlessly more interesting song. Indeed, any discussion of Birdy's cover seems to swerve on the negative side, following the oft-repeated but clearly nonsensical idea that the original version of a song will always be the superior one (I leave you Bon Iver's version at the bottom so you can make up your own mind over which one you prefer). More generally, I wonder if the excessive coverage Friday received reflects a culture more willing to discuss why something is 'bad' (and in doing so, placing itself in a position of superiority to the object in question), than truly engage with why something might be particularly affecting or beautiful.
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