18: Rhymes

I don’t know if Cockney rhyming slang is “real” but it obviously has a cool version and an uncool version. If you leave off the part that rhymes with the original word, it’s clever and mysterious. If you actually say the rhyming part, you sound like this:

Rhymes

In the bummer between fool and knowledge, I told bitchin’ lives from an atta dog. I couldn’t un-chintz steeple to cry much, but I did sun-prince my elf these were the blessed wives at any slice. I did get my prom to order a crack fife for my cad’s mirth stray. It blame in the hail; the frackage was in the bar as my bomb stove me to the hair sport for a birch fissions strip. In the glass-henger beet I hope-send up the strife to lemon-grate the chafe-pea hecka schism, and in the unkempt I Christ hopin’ my calm. Text strummer I fold go-nuts from pre-signed a mounter.

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Five versions of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

I have a playlist of covers and remixes and alternate takes, and it starts with five versions of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and I’d like to share them, in the spirit of this project.

Robert Glasper Experiment

Your average cross-genre cover is just an uninspired map of one genre over another. You get a lot of punk covers, girl-with-guitar covers, a cappella covers, jazz covers. This is a jazz cover, but one that includes just as many specific choices (maybe more lol) as the original.

Witchz

This is a little more predictable. Kind of a dirtbag country trap thing? But it’s a nice update of Nirvana’s “I’m a piece of shit, get me high” vibe, like this is what the same kids would listen to now. And while the artist has a range from phonk (real genre!) to rock, this song matches their “Weird West” visual style.

The Muppets

Are the Muppets actually funny? I don’t like this version, but I admire how they use Beaker to censor “mulatto” and “libido.” Excited to see Beaker’s work on “Muppets Sing Kendrick Lamar.”

Boombox Rehearsals

The Nirvana demos, called the “boombox rehearsals,” are crunchy and blown out, which again feels like doubling down on the intentional sludge of the original. I’m not a big demos guy, but this one helps me get why someone would listen to a demo. The rawness makes the song new again. Plus it’s fun to hear different lyrics when I can barely understand either version. Speaking of which:

Weird Al

Is Weird Al actually funny? (jk, yes!) Only a few of his songs are actually about the original: “Achy Breaky Song,” “This Song Is Just Six Words Long,” “Perform This Way.” And part of the joke is that while making fun of Nirvana for being unintelligible, Al enunciates perfectly clearly. You have to, when your song has punchlines!

I know this isn’t a “lots of comments” newsletter but I’d love to hear your favorite version of a classic!