Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Music Video: 10000 Spoons "Precious Bleeding Love" (Depeche Mode / Leona Lewis mashup)



As I sort of hinted at last Saturday, I think a lot of the reason I find mashups interesting and worth listening to is that a good one can make me like a song I previously hated.1 There's one mash-up out there that actually sort of makes me feel warmly about Journey. (You're not going to find it at PATSP, though, because anything with that kind of destructive potential needs to be tightly restricted. Obviously.)

I didn't necessarily hate Leona Lewis, but the song sounded kinda dumb to me the first time I heard it. And it didn't help that I misheard "keep bleeding" as "keep breathing," the first time, which was just confusing.2 Put her in front of a Depeche Mode song I already really liked, though, and suddenly I like the lyrics just fine. So I'm forced to conclude that I'm mostly interested in the particular palette of instruments playing behind the singer, not what he or she is saying, even though I'd always thought I mostly cared about the words. Better to find this out sooner rather than later, I suppose.

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1 Or at least that's the right-brain reason: the left-brain reason is that I am continually amazed that pop music is so interchangeable, that so many songs change chords at the same moments, that so many have the same structure, that it's all so homogeneous. Even songs that sound like they have weird chord progressions, like Nirvana's "Lithium" or Beyonce's "Single Ladies," seem to fit right in with everything else. Somehow, this manages to surprise me every time.
2 I also heard "Baby, this time I'll be bulletproof," in La Roux's "Bulletproof," as "Maybe this time I'll be bulletproof," which changing that one consonant sound makes it a very different, and much more depressing, song. In my defense, I don't think she's enunciating very well.
I also always mishear Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," though: I always hear "It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not" as "It doesn't make a difference if we're naked or not." That's the only reason I like the song at all, and it makes no sense unless you know how I'm interpreting that line.


7 comments:

Tom said...

That was quite a bit better than the original version. I almost want to listen to it again. Also I never realized that the lyric to bulletproof was "baby" not "maybe". I think I like maybe better.

Kapt'n Splash said...

something about listening to this while scrolling slowly down and looking at the newest transmitted light photos was just perfect.

Nature Assassin said...

Cool! Did you hear Robyn's track on the last Royksopp album? The Girl and the Robot. So very Depeche Modey, so very addictive.

This just went on my "music to water plants to" playlist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQuqeLBTetA

Paul said...

Ugh, Leona Lewis makes my spleen convulse. But this IS an improvement on her, so I can't complain much.

I don't know what sources you're using, but there is an awesome mashup of Beyonce and a Welsh punk band called Anhrefn called "Rhedeg i Beyonce" which is the best one I've heard to date. Highly recommended if you can find it.

(I have that Girl & The Robot single and it sounds nothing like DM to me.)

mr_subjunctive said...

Nature Assassin:

I did know about "The Girl and the Robot." (actually blogged about it, even, because there are plants in the video) I have a mashup on my computer of it with Lily Allen's "Not Fair," too. (The mashup mostly works. A little overly long.)

"Alice" kinda creeped me out, though I can see how it would grow on a person.

Paul:

What I've been using for sources, mostly, is Bootie, though I've googled the stuff I really liked and wound up finding other tracks by people Bootie features. I'll look for "Rhedeg i Beyonce."

"The Girl and the Robot" sounds Depeche Modey enough to me to see where the comparison comes from. Heavily electronic, notes mostly in the lower registers, dancey, repetitive. Obviously the vocals are pretty different. But I can see the comparison.

Nature Assassin said...

Houseplants, in a Royksopp video, in a PATSP post!! All my favorite things.

Unknown said...

Mis-heard song lyrics are called Mondegreens. There is a good Wikipedia article on this phenomenon here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen