Show business has shaken out all its old songs about the main thing
[ad_1]
This year, Christmas has trumped New Year’s in pop culture. In terms of the number of theme songs, the religious holiday exceeded its secular counterpart. This happened largely thanks to Western artists, who this time simply burst into hundreds of covers of old, old hits. Of course, from year to year they re-sing something they love, but not in such quantities. So it turned out that a week before the New Year we have practically no worthy alternative to the Jingle Bells ringing from everywhere. Today “ZD” listens to the little that still exists.
Singer Zhenya Lyubich traditionally delights the audience with a new snowy ballad on New Year’s Eve. This time, the role of the white winter song was her musical statement based on Osip Mandelstam’s poem “Slower than the snow hive.” This work can hardly be called a song in our usual format – a verse plus a chorus. There is only one long verse, and all this quiet joy lasts two and a half minutes. The music immerses us in a state of contemplation of the slow fall of snow flakes in complete calm. Windows curtained by snowfall and the silence that inevitably comes in the morning after a noisy holiday. The Swedish ABBA sang about something similar in meaning in their 1980 New Year’s megahit Happy New Year (The champagne is over / And the fireworks are over / Here we are, me and you, / Lost and sad…), she also sang in a minor key, but it turned out somehow livelier, more danceable and rhythmic. Lyubich’s song, however, is not formally a New Year’s song, but it fully reflects the state of Christmas silence or New Year’s post-champagne emptiness in the soul.
American singer Billie Eilish expressed something very similar in mood and condition. On Christmas Eve she sang a quiet old song, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, live on television. It was first performed in 1944 by Judy Garland, known as “the girl from Oz,” an actress who played the main role in the famous children’s Hollywood blockbuster, the analogue of which in the Soviet Union was “The Wizard of Oz.” Judy was madly loved by Americans and is still considered the standard for performing a Christmas song, which was chosen for herself by the modern eternal “girl” Billie Eilish, a teenage idol.
Many artists over the years have created various adaptations of this song, including Frank Sinatra and Christina Aguilera. Together, the artists kept it at the top of the Christmas charts almost every year and made plenty of money from it. In 1995, it was performed by singer Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland, but her second daughter, better known as cabaret diva Liza Minnelli, did not sing this hit for her mother. But she sang a lot of other things – bright and entertaining.
Billie gave the song her unique sound, turning the sweet caramel viscousness into a now fashionable whisper with aspirations and wheezing, but still did not hold back her growing vocals. The powerful voice of the young pop idol in this cover is laced with neat piano accompaniment, the quiet gurgling of the double bass and the barely audible rustle of the drum cymbals.
In turn, this year U2 revived the Christmas song they performed in 1987 – Christmas (Baby, Please, Come Home). For the first time since then, Bono and Co. included it in their concert program, which put all their countless fans on the ears. This also one of the main pop hits from the “around the Christmas tree” category was first recorded by its author, soul singer Darlene Love in 1963. Since then, the hit, like the previous one, has been picked up by many, including Mariah Carey, Jon Bon Jovi, Cher and Foo Fighters. Of course, U2 performs this hit with the special soulfulness and charisma that Bono is capable of – at first with only an acoustic guitar, which sounds masterfully in the hands of their main guitarist Edge, but by the second verse other musicians of the group are included in this “lampiness”. Having heard the familiar melody, which many consider to be the original “U-Tush” (as they considered the masterful cover of “Just like everyone else” by Alla Pugacheva to be the next hit of “A-Studio”), the audience held their breath from the first chords, and then, of course, joyfully began to sing along words that everyone in the English-speaking world has long learned, like our “Little Christmas Tree”.
On the eve of the winter holidays, Lana Del Rey covered the song Unchained Melody by her beloved Elvis Presley, which he performed two months before his death. Especially for the show “Christmas at Graceland” (Elvis’s luxurious estate in Memphis), the singer rehearsed a number with this heartbreaking, sad ballad. Alanis Morisette, in turn, added pop to the show by performing Last Christmas from Wham!, rapper Post Malone confessed his love to Elvis, dancing against the backdrop of a winking Christmas tree with his song (You’re The) Devil In Disguise, John Legend spiced up the event with hope for a bright future with the holiday song Happy Christmas (War Is Over) from the legacy of John Lennon, Kane Brown sang Blue Christmas (Elvis’s ashes were disturbed more than once), country diva Laney Wilson delighted the audience with the old, almost folk hit Santa Claus Is Back In Town. And in the finale, and all together, the overseas pop stars created something like “Old Songs about the Main Thing” in the luxurious decorations of Elvis Presley’s house, singing songs accompanied by a gospel choir in all corners – from the living room to the porch, the swimming pool and the stables, creating a real “ circus with horses.”
The Moscow group “Moral Code” wisely decided to keep up with the general trend – to look back at the past and look for footholds in the beacons of pop culture of the last century – and released a new video for the song “You Know” by singer Natalya Vetlitskaya. In itself, such an almost collab is already sensational, given the background of both the group and the pop stars. Some time ago, Ms. Vetlitskaya was burning with the ambition of a comeback, but the pop diva, who had been living in Spain for a long time, did not quite manage to enter the long-running waters twice. Well, at least in this incarnation – the author of the song – something was somehow depicted. Like, half a lump.
“This song is dedicated to Her Majesty the woman, her personality, spiritual world and state. She calls on women to be honest with themselves, free, loved and prosperous,” the group leader Sergei Mazaev, almost bursting with pathos, scattered beads of delight. However, his feelings can be understood – the man has always been and is not indifferent to female beauty. According to the musician, “this story is both a parody of the fairy tale about “Beauty and the Beast” and an allusion to the novel by director Yakin and his passion, for whom he “gave up his kikimora” in the film “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession.” Although the clip does not contain anything New Year’s or Christmas, not even winter, it maintains a relaxed and nostalgic festive mood for the upcoming holidays.
But what is a holiday without trash and frenzy? St. Petersburg rockers Jane Air teamed up with their fellow countrymen The Hatters and recorded a fierce collaboration “New Year in the Dark”. They came up with a short, but very meaningful in terms of semantic and musical content, a sketch in the style of gypsy punk – with crazy metal drums and the clanging of all kinds of instruments, accompanied by heart-rending screams and the clashing of dishes – telling about the accident of an electrical short circuit a minute before the chimes struck . The metaphor, of course, is majestic, but I would only like to wish that this song does not become prophetic for any of the participants in the recording. Otherwise, it used to be that musicians would sing about something – and voila! Grandfather Frost is ready…
Newspaper headline:
From trash talk around the Christmas tree to snow ballads
[ad_2]
Source link
