Angel Olsen brings the mood for a cover of Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance"

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Originally published at: Angel Olsen brings the mood for a cover of Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance" | Boing Boing

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My Dear Wife and I do a Psycho Billy version of this 80’s gem.

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I think Safety Dance benefits more from speeding up than slowing down.

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I was going to say the same thing, the cover is improved when played at x1.25 or x1.50 speed. Slowed down as it is i find it takes too long and it makes me feel more impatient than anything else, some songs do work slowed down but this is not one of them.

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I don’t agree. This sounds so much in the spirit of the time to me, when I was soaking up as much Post-Punk and New Wave as I could.

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Given the other music video that hit a billion views today (This video just hit one billion views | Boing Boing), why is boing boing not tricking us with that all day?

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This is a bit old, but Nouvelle Vague did a fantastic job covering similar 80’s hits. Their version of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Killing Moon” is great:

And the original, for reference:

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This is absolutely fabulous. It reminds me of Siouxsie Sioux mixed with Simple Minds, playing at a Peter Gabriel speed. Fantastic remix of the tune, lush and atmospheric.

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It reminds me of back when a goth/industrial club used to play songs at 3/4 or half speed at the end of the night to “calm down the psycho dancers.”

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Yep. And…

Yep, also. Her version of Gloria was tedious, and so this this one.

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What’s most interesting to me, about that video, is that back then a filling station had multiple petrol brands on offer. Nowadays they are all one-brand only. Nice video, though.

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I have to agree that it does sound more inline with some of the slower, angsty of new wave. And it certainly is less tedious than the previous Gloria example.

It still isn’t really my cup of tea, though I appreciate the synth and vocoder. This could maybe grow on me. But as I have said, just not into the “slow down a popular fast song”. It is the equivalent of adding some brass gears to something to steam punk it up, and acting like you did something transformative. YMMV

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Slower = Safer!

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i’m with the “needs speeding up” camp. i think that what the slower, dirge-like interpretation does is sap it of the joy that’s in the original. the original is so bouncy, you just gotta dance to it, or at least bop your head along.

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I got the same effect on the original by playing it a 3/4 speed. It was then just as plodding as the Angel Olsen cover.

I expect she will do a slow Rickroll as an encore.

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Happy to turn you to just that (even better, it’s sung by the real deal):

Bonus:

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What, we don’t like Pomplamoose here anymore ?

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We all have our mid 90s, chipmunk vocal, happy hardcore moments. I don’t think anyone ever did a happy hardcore version of Safety Dance though.

Back from the days when Scott Brown was releasing so much stuff he had to create new record labels to hide it. People tend to react badly when one person is releasing 1-2 new records a week.

I think that’s how we ended up with gabber, they slowed down the music so much that everyone liked the darker sound, then they sped it up faster than the original slowed down music.

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I’m not usually a fan of slowing songs down, except for this one;

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Much like the Gloria cover…

A big ole nope.