Blake, Knowles, and the Art of the Cover Song

I’m normally not a huge fan of cover songs. More often than not, I find that an artist does a cover of a good little bitty, but has merely replicated what they’ve heard. The sound is just homogenized. Nothing is done to make it their own. However, I feel as though we’re in the dawning of a new era, in which musicians have become a little more ballsy in the art of covering a song. See James Blake, for example. Our favorite British dub producer took the sweet-as-honey Feist song, “the Limit of Your Love”, and turned it into a chilling and melancholy song, equipped with the potential to ruin a good pair of car speakers. With that record, Blake created a decent amount of hype for his debut album (which I still cannot stop playing). Even Solange Knowles has placed herself in a realm entirely separate from her Pop Icon of an older sister.

Solange – Left Side Drive (Boards of Canada Sample)

Solange – Stillness is the Move (the Dirty Projectors Cover)

Naysayers can complain, but I have to jump to the defense of the singer…she did both songs justice. And by way of James Blake, if this is a taste of what’s to come on her new album, I will most certainly be keeping tabs on Ms. Knowles. As should everyone else.

– Fauna

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