Celebrating Asian American Covers
MAARC Playlist for January 2020
Our first 2020 playlist is “Celebrating Asian American Covers.” It consists of 12 Asian American singers and bands performing mainstream American pop hits from the 1950s to today. We decided to examine covers not just because we want to showcase great Asian American singers, but also to directly confront the stereotype of Asians as imitators. Do you think these covers display originality and creativity? Do they make these songs “Asian” in some way? Do you think these covers play into this stereotype? We would love to hear your thoughts. In the next twelve weekdays, we will discuss each of these songs individually.
Vienna Teng: Idioteque (Radiohead Cover)
A graduate of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan, Vienna Teng has worked on renewable energy and sustainable communities for many years. Given this background, it is no wonder that Radiohead’s “Idiotheque” held a special attraction for her. The surreal-sounding apocalyptic song discusses climate change/denial as well as the effects of capitalism. With its dependence on synthesized sounds and timbral contrasts, however, “Idiotheque” is not an obvious candidate for an acoustic cover.
In this 2009 performance, Teng, Alex Wong and Kevin Rice replaced the sense of being lost that pervaded much of the original—thanks largely to the awkward five-bar phrases—with hard-driving drums. Towards the end of the song, the hazy instrumental interlude became a virtuosic piano solo. The result is a tension that slowly builds throughout the song until it suddenly dissipates when the piano drops out shortly before the end. For you, does this new musical trajectory change the meaning of this song, and does it demonstrate originality and creativity? We would love to hear your thoughts.
Run River North: Mr. Brightside (The Killers Cover)
Run River North created a cover of a song of The Killers’ debut single, which was named “Song of the Decade” by the radio stations Absolute Radio and XFM. The original version of this song of jealousy and desperation opens with a frenetic guitar lick that perfectly depicts the protagonist’s sense of anxiety and despair. When singer Brandon Flowers declares that he is “Mr. Brightside” at the end of each chorus, the pronouncement comes off as delusional. There is no way he can get himself to see the positives any time soon.
In contrast, the protagonist in Run River North’s cover is not in denial—he is depressed. The tempo is significantly slower, and the original’s frenetic guitar lick has become a lot more lyrical. The singer—Alex Hwang—sounds despondent. At the end of the chorus, he adds a single word to the original lyrics, and sings, “I’m Mr. Brightside tonight.” He is not someone who tries to force positivity on himself. Instead, he just wants to break his depression for one night, and this leads to a beautiful instrumental interlude that really breaks the dejected mood of the opening.
In the original version, the chorus did not change the protagonist’s mood. It therefore made perfect sense that the second verse and chorus have the exact words and feel of the first. In Run River North’s cover, this would make no sense. So, the second verse and chorus is sung—in reverse order—by the band’s keyboardist Sally Kang. Is the ex-girlfriend going through the same emotional experience? Or is this the imagination of the male protagonist? Does the cover demonstrate originality and creativity? I’ll let you decide.
Giana Nguyen: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Whitney Houston cover)
Written by George Robert Merrill and Shannon Rubicam, the lyrics of Whitney Houston’s 1987 megahit “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” explored loneliness. Rubicam said, “I pictured somebody single wishing that they could find that special person for themselves. It wasn’t, ‘I wanna go down the disco and dance,’ really. It was, ‘I wanna do that dance of life with somebody.’ That was the thought behind the song.” Houston performs this song in an upbeat manner and adds many seductive “WOOOOOOOs,” turning the rather sad lyrics into an anthem. Every time it comes on in a bar or an event, everyone joins us at the top of their lungs during the choruses.
In Giana Nguyen’s cover, she focused on expressing the meaning of the lyrics and created a stripped-down version of the song. In an interview with Jeff Pearlman, she said, “The sentiment behind that song was what drew me to it. I started the process of recording this album shortly after my divorce so the idea of wanting to ‘dance with somebody who loves me’ was very real. I was alone in my new apartment and the song came on.” Nguyen had originally wanted to include the song in her debut album “GIANA,” but she wasn’t happy with her initial recording. We are really happy that she came back a year later to create this really soulful rendition of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”
To find more information about Nguyen, you can visit: http://voyagela.com/interview/meet-giana-nguyen-giana-nguyen-orange-county/?fbclid=IwAR2An7x45ELxuz715ymQ7gdlsvKWF-sfu71WKtsWTCcXbK4axn3L5I0aKm8
Chai Town: The Ed Sheeran Mashup
Chai Town’s “The Ed Sheeran Mashup” includes arrangements of three songs: “Shape of You” from ÷, “Don’t” from x, and “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” from +. Based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and founded in 2000, Chai Town is one of the top South Asian a cappella groups in North America.
Over the past quarter century, the growth of South Asian a cappella groups is one of the most important developments in collegiate music making. Penn Masala (from the University of Pennsylvania), formed in 1996, is generally acknowledged to be the first of these groups. Today, there are more than 200 Desi a cappella groups, five established national competitions, and the Association of South-Asian A cappella, a professional organization dedicated to fostering this type of music making.
The South Asian a cappella tradition is marked by the fusion of South Asian and contemporary Western elements. This includes choreography, vocal techniques and inflections, rhythms, and languages. You can hear this in Chai Town’s latest video: a mashup of Ed Sheeran’s “Best Part Of Me” from _No. 6 Collaborations Project_ and “Tujhe Kitna Chahne Lage,” a song from the 2019 Bollywood film _Kabir Singh_: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzMxroPewro
Nadia Ali: Roxanne (The Police Cover)
In 2014, Libyan-born Pakistani American singer-songwriter Nadia Ali created a cover of the signature song of one of the iconic rock bands of the late 1970s and 1980s. A single from the The Police’s debut album Outlandos d’Amour (1978), the song is a message from a man to a prostitute named Roxanne. He tells her that he has loved her since they first met, and that she no longer has to be a prostitute. Written by Sting, “Roxanne” was inspired by the prostitutes that he saw outside the seedy hotel the band stayed in, and by a poster about a performance of Cyrano de Bergerac—the female lead is named “Roxane”—that hung in the hotel foyer.
In The Police’s original recording of “Roxanne,” Sting delivers the lyrics in a slightly disembodied way, leading many listeners to wonder about the protagonist’s sincerity. When he sings “I won’t share you with another boy,” is he just jealous, or does he actually care about Roxanne? In Nadia Ali’s cover, the delicate opening accompaniment and her intricate vocal inflections make the protagonist’s feelings of sympathy and empathy palpable. For this listener at least, what is more ambiguous is who the singer actually is. Is she a lover, a friend, or is Roxanne singing to herself?