Friday, April 06, 2007

"But . . Mark . . . It's . . . Shit . . . "

For his work on the majestic Back to Black, I should be cutting Mark Ronson some slack but he tries to defend the indefensible in today's Guardian:

"I listened to [the Smiths'] Stop Me if You Think You've Heard This One Before seven billion times when I was growing up," says Ronson, who asked Australian soul singer Daniel Merriweather to record it for Version. That hasn't stopped a few Smiths nuts, who consider any cover to be sacrilege, from "calling for blood", but he's unrepentant. "I could be the town pariah, but you can hear the dedication to the original, every little detailed thing, so I don't care what Smiths fans think." [From Caroline Sullivan's article 'Original Sin']

Weren't Massive Attack doing this sort of thing with Horace Andy on Blue Lines about 16 years ago?

It's a cover version so bland and 'eurgh' that I was actually going to post about the song last week but couldn't summon the energy to push the publish button.

Mark Ronson can put it down to people baying for blood, but when I first heard his version of this classic Smiths song I was prompted to look around for the closing doors of an elevator 'cos where else could the muzak be coming from? It was only with me now reading the Sullivan article - and Ronson's wee quote hidden deep within it - that I was prompted to dust down the draft.

With his production work with Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Christina Aguilera, Ronson is currently the bright you thing on the East Village block, but bright young things can only be bright in the first place if they promise to burn out sooner rather than later. Looks like Ronson is keeping his side of the bargain.

No doubt I will be eating those words quicker than you can say: "Grammys, Brits and a bloody KBE?".

Christ, the song has already been played 180,000 times on his MySpace page, and it was only officially released as a single four days ago. Check out the song on his page, and tell me I'm wrong.

PS - Lily Allen's cover of the Kaiser Chiefs' 'Oh My God' on the same album is also boggin.

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