Nouvelle Vague
Although I enjoy funny or tongue-in-cheek songs, I always feel a little silly about enjoying outright novelty songs. Why, I’m not sure; surely I’m entitled to listen to any sort of music I enjoy. But the fact remains, if a song has, as its primary virtue, a video with the lead singer dressed up as an obese version of Michael Jackson, I’m inclined to give it a pass.
But other than Green Jelly’s “Three Little Pigs,” I haven’t enjoyed a novelty song for a very long time. So it’s with a bit of befuddlement that I find myself enjoying songs by Nouvelle Vague, a French band that covers punk and New Wave music. (You can listen to them on the amazingly amazing Morning Becomes Eclectic here.)
I’m not sure what it is about hearing them cover the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck” as a breezy bossa nova tune that makes me grin ear to ear — although shifting the song from a male singer to a female one subtly changes the lyrics, in my mind — but it does. Even better than that, though, is their reinterpretation of a classic for those who graduated high school in the 1980s: “Melt with You” by Modern English. This stripped-down performance is a real reinterpretation of the hyper-earnest original. So not only is it funny for people my age (eek, I have a “my age” now), it actually makes you appreciate the song itself, as though listening to it again for the first time.
My musical tastes have been undergoing something of a transformation in the last year or two. French people singing ’80s New Wave as a bossa nova tune isn’t somewhere I expected to end up, which just goes to show, I suppose.
Maybe they’re not novelty tunes at all. In which case, ignore this post and just go download “Melt with You” from iTunes.
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Man, Nouvelle Vague is just some great, great stuff to listen to. I wouldn’t call it parody, though … it’s more Parody styling.
Or just fun. Like, have you ever heard of “The Moog Cookbook?” They are a moog band that does covers. They have an a self-titled album from 1996 called “The Moog Cookbook” (they only did two, but they’re awesome). The covers of “Black Hole Sun” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sound like they should’ve been on the soundtrack for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” or as an alternate soundtrack for “DarkStar.” Love it. If there is any justice in the world, I will get to use their songs in a movie some day. ESPECIALLY Black Hole Sun.
Then, I like some of my music light and fun, like “The Amateur Lovers.” Now THAT CD, man, if you can find it … WAY ahead of their time, they only did one CD for the WAAAAY defunct Loosegroove Records, and if it came out NOW they would have been all over the soundtrack for “Garden State.” Funny stuff.
Thanks for linking to my blog! As soon as I get the template adjusted I’ll do the same.
Comment by f. chong rutherford — August 25, 2005 @ 19:18
I downloaded their version of “Black Hole Sun” from iTunes. That’s awesome, and I agree with you being a Hitchhikers’ sort of tune.
Comment by Beau — August 29, 2005 @ 15:18