Originally published at: Listen to two awesome versions of "the greatest song ever written" - Boing Boing
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The use of this song in Donnie Darko is also worth calling out - it’s pure magic.
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We all know what the greatest song is
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Another cover for your enjoyment:
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Indeed! I think the original and pavement cover are in 4/4 time but this seems to be waltzing along at 3/4. Or is that 6/8? It doesn’t have that repeating up then down pattern I think of when I hear 6/8. Music is weird sometimes.
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I was going to post that one myself - though it’s not as great as their cover of the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck.”
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Love that song but I find Ian’s acoustic version cringey and mediocre.
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It could be, heh, different…
Way different…
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Sounds like 3/4 to me, yea.
Cool cover.
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I do like it when a cover version that really makes a song its own. 
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Yes, but, but… It’s like they split a 4/4 bar into two 3/4 bars then placed the emphasis on the two 1’s instead of the 2’s and 4’s. And stretched out the rest of the parts over the two new bars instead of the old one bar.
IKR? This is one film where I say the original theatrical version is better than the later director’s cut, simply because of the inexplicable music change.
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I’m fond of this cover. Not sure they added much to it, but I like the vocal chemistry between Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs.
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I think the orchestration behind the original song really helped sell it. That and the video being in constant rotation when it came out. I loved that song when it first came out. I will say Ian McCulloch’s voice sounds a lot more comfortable and less shakey vs. way back when he seemed to really have to strain to hit some of those notes in the studio performance. Sure, he did change a little bit, I would assume to suit his current vocal range.
The shakey vocals came back in the Pavement version. That and their cover came off as kind of a dirge although there was also a lot of good stuff in it in the instrumentation backing it. The coda seemed to me to channel a bit of the Space Oddity that inspired the original.
It’s always fun listening to difference between when a singer isn’t sure what’s going to work vs years later when they know the bits that work, and know how to use them. I suspect there’s some of that in play here.
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If you love it can I recommend for your listening pleasure:
Really excellent overview of the context of the film and of the music and how emergent that was in the course of the film.
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