And now for something completely different! For those that don’t know, and I imagine that’s most of you, I also play music. I haven’t been active for a little while, so to get back into the swing of things I thought I would do a few covers of some of my favourite songs. I’ve been obsessed with this tune for a while now, and then a month and a half ago I read an amazing poem by
called Let There Be Love Let There Be Loss Let There Be Let There Be: Ode to ‘Stay’ by The Kid Laroi (ft. Justin Bieber) . . .
And had a lovely chat with
in the comments about how much we loved the song, and especially this performance (how cute is it when Kid whispers “legend” as Bieber starts singing) . . .Since then, I became determined to work up a cover of it. It is probably the hardest song I have ever attempted to do, haha. These boys can fucking sing! Of course, it didn’t help that my voice is really out of practice, and my piano playing is basic, at best. So for the last month I’ve been recording versions to see if I could get a usable take, and just the other day I finally got one, all the way through, without any mistakes. Huzzah!
For those who are interested in the recording process itself, I am a big fan of autotune, and use it in that T-Pain way—Kid Laroi does too on the original version of ‘Stay’—as an ‘aesthetic’ or ‘sound’. It’s often assumed that autotune can fix everything about your vocals, or magically make you sing better, but in truth—if you sound bad without the autotune it ain’t gonna help that much, and to get that classic ‘sound’ you still have to sing your heart out. By way of illustration, here’s a short out-take of me doing a pretty average vocal performance, which reveals the limitations of the effect (it gets really shaky around “I’d be fucked up”):
And for anyone wondering why I’d want to cover a Justin Bieber song—I know there will be some head scratching out there—it’s because he’s phenomenal. Sure, I love John Coltrane and Laurie Anderson and Bartok. But I also love JB. And for those unconvinced, check this performance out—
Okay, I also promised some exciting poetry news as well! My writing partner Laurence Stacey and I have been poeming together for about 20 years, and we just had a collaborative renga (haiku sequence) called ‘The Mysterious Technique of the Cat’ published in the journal Under the Bashō—I haven’t published anything in many years, and it’s the first time we’ve ever had a collaborative piece published before!
While this is exciting in itself, the really exciting news is that Laurence and I have also put a book together of some of our best work, both solo verses and collaborative sequences, which we will be publishing in the very near future, so expect some updates coming in the next week or so! I am so excited about this. It’s something we’ve talked about doing for years, and to finally have a collection ready for publication feels amazing! All the editing and design work is done, and now we’re just finishing things off.
Okay that’s it for this Jukebox session. If you have any requests, let me know in the comments—I can’t promise that I’ll be able to cover your favourite song, but we’ll never know unless you suggest it!
Vespers
Poems by Dick Whyte, and other miscellanea. Explore the archive . . .
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