MP3 of the Day
I'm not sure how I feel about this. This new generation of OC Soundtrack bands - that we'll all care about and maybe remember for the next eight months - has been covering 80's classics. Today we have YOUTH GROUP covering Forever Young by Alphaville. Is this suppose to be ironic? Is it that the young OC audience doesn't know the original and YOUTH GROUP can score an easy hit? Is the fact that Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie produced the song supposed to add some street cred? Someone please tell me!
posted by Sean at 9:51 AM
8 Comments:
1) Sounds like an unapologetically mushy, lip-smacking tribute. Which I suppose doesn't preclude it being ironic as well. I mean, if Tullycraft did an unapologetically mushy, lip-smacking tribute of this song, people would figure it was ironic too, wouldn't they?
2) Most of the young OC audience is indeed likely to be unaware of the original -- although I believe that it survived as a prom standard well into the 90s. Regardless, Youth Group will make bank, because right now, undoubtedly, a trillion teenage girls are burning this cover onto mix CDs for guys they'll hate in a year -- and who will hate them.
3) Like those teenage girls give a God-damn about the producer. Walla's on there so that those of us trying to hold onto our teens (or twenties) can rationalize that we are allowed to watch pablum like the OC -- and to buy the soundtrack albums -- because we have sufficient ironic distance. "Forever Young" indeed.
Regardless, it's actually a pretty good cover, in that it gives the original its proper due, but adds its own gloss of soppy, sobbing, building, throbbing guitar.
Regardless of the intentions, what ever they may be, I did enjoy hearing this this morning.
call me old fashioned - but I like the original much better.
The original is sooo much better! Chris Walla's typical 'death cab' production adds absolutely nothing! Almost everything he touches ends sounding the same. Death Cab For Cutie is retirement home music for our generation! It's true. Countless slow/mid-tempo songs play in the background as feeding tubes hang from the tattooed elderly of the future. Come on guys! Would 130BPM kill you from time to time?!
At least they're Australian and like Teenage Fanclub. You're just jealous the OC has never used one of your beach party songs. Damn this song is boring. I like DCFC. Do you have something against Bellingham bands?
I was prepared to love this - I generally enjoy cover songs and I like this song in particular. I don't have any attachment to the original recording though - I like it for the song, not the presentation.
That said, I found this pretty boring. True, there's some nice guitar building toward the end as t-train mentioned, but the singing? Absolutely dull. Boring. I have to say, Youth Group manages to disappoint me every time. I keeping listening to songs ready to like them and they keep letting me down.
As for your question - yes, the younger audience will not have heard this song. I only heard it at a summer camp where it had become one of those middle school dance classics (along with Stairway To Heaven and a couple They Might Be Giants Songs). Kids who don't know it will probably fall in love and then be crushed to learn this isn't an original. Then they'll download all the Alphaville they can find on their Napster or whathaveyou and get all into that 80s synth (what genre is that anyway?). Then they'll think they're cool because they listen to bands their friends haven't heard of.
I totally agree with mer.
the original version was much better, but not one of my favorite songs.
it kills me every time i hear one of my friends listening to the oc soundtrack and thinking they're oh-so-indie.
if a song is on the oc soundtrack, it surrenders whatever "indie cred" (i hate saying that, it's so phony) it had.
if they actually liked it, it wouldn't bother me.
i just die inside knowing that a year from now, they'll be moving their thumb over that little circle on their iPod (why does everyone make a such a big deal over those? is it really that groundbreaking to move your thumb in a circle?) and wondering how they could have ever liked their former favorite band.
tullycraft love forever.
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