I posted Rowland S. Howard's cover of Talk Talk's Life's What You Make It as part of the first Sunday cover versions mix three weeks ago. It sent me searching for other versions of the song and I remembered this edit that came out in the early summer. Some songs probably shouldn't be tampered with and I might usually think Life's What You Make It is one of them but this has grown on me...
Life's What You Make It (Random House Project Rework)
92 BPM chuggy drums, a wobbly synth sound that is very 2025 and some of Talk Talk's guitars, distorted and isolated, flying around. Mark Hollis' vocal and piano arrive and we're off. The final three Talk Talk albums- Spirit Of Eden, The Colour Of Spring and Laughing Stock- have become standard bearers for a different kind of pop music, something that started out as pop and became a marriage of avant-pop, post rock, ambient and something entirely their own. Life's What You Make It, from 1985's The Colour Of Spring, stands out as the big single, a Balearic/ new wave smash, written partly because the band's management were concerned there was no obvious single on the proposed album. Mark Hollis and Tim Friese- Greene went away, a little reluctantly, and wrote a single- Life's What You Make It. A decent day's work.
Here's Rowland's version, recorded in 2009 for his Pop Crimes album when he knew had terminal liver cancer which gives him a different take on the lyrics.
No comments:
Post a Comment