Stuff I'm Listening To - A Week of Covers - Day 7 - It's My Life

Artist: No Doubt

Original Artist: Talk Talk

Favourite Lyrics: 
Funny how I find myself
In love with you. 
If I could buy my reasoning, 
I'd pay to lose

Why?: If anyone was surprised by this song's appearance on my blog this week... um... you must be new here! HI! Let me introduce myself!  

First, no contest here. The original is my favourite hands down! Second... 'But wait', you're thinking... 'you already posted a Talk Talk song'... Yes. I did. But the original artist for that song was a group called the Reaction, so there. 

This was the cover song that prompted this week long theme. Sometimes being a Talk Talk fan means you feel like you're part of some kind of church. For me, it felt like your affirmation to join the Church of Talk Talk is to declare how much you detest No Doubt's version of the song. Poor No Doubt, clearly they are the devil to Talk Talk. So at that I'm going to have to say that I'm more of a casual worshiper, you know, the kind that only visits Easter and Christmas... or would that be April 5th and maybe January 4th? ;) 

I like this version. It reminded me when it came out, that there was this amazing song from a long time ago that I really, really liked. From some band that didn't exist anymore. And the lead singer had a sweet voice. It reminded me that 'HEY! Wait a second... I have this in the form of the extended mix buried somewhere on a compilation CD' and I hadn't quite migrated it to my iPod. Since then the extended version by Talk Talk has forever resided within my digital music library.

I like No Doubt as a band, so I certainly didn't get bend out of shape over the cover song. Sorry fellow Talkies (see, I'm still new. I have zero idea... what do you refer to yourself as if you're a devout follower of Talk Talk anyway?), but some of you seem to have a seriously misguided hate on for Gwen Stefani. No Doubt remade the song, but practically note for note it's unchanged. If that's not honouring the original arrangement for the perfection it was, I'm not sure what else I can be said. 

A personal aside, today is a bit of an anniversary and both versions of this song become relevant (well, it's a stretch, but my blog, my life, I do what I want!) If you follow my blog, you'll know I was in a motorcycle accident in 2016. In 2017, this day would have been the eve of Paul and I setting out for what was going to be the longest motorcycle trip we'd ever taken. We rode (not trailered) our motorcycles from Toronto to Deal's Gap in Tennessee. My bike, we joke, tried to kill me, not unlike No Doubt's video. And this song (Talk Talk, not No Doubt) is the love song I've sung to my bike ever since.

Original video below. BONUS: One of the better mash-up audios from youtube, where Gwen Stefani's vocals are matched up with Mark Hollis' so anyone who doesn't believe my claim that note for note, No Doubt changed very, very little, they can hear it for themselves. For what it's worth, I feel like they did a pretty good job of it. The only thing I would critique would be that Adrian Young is a clearly a great punk/ska drummer but doesn't appear to have Lee Harris' talent for flourishes and subtly that dress the original version and the bass guitar doesn't sound quite right, which I'm chalking up to the difference between Paul Webb having used a fret-less vs fretted one that Tony Kanal uses (I assume). (Note: There's a bit of a delay in the start of the audio, but it doesn't have that weird choppy digital-ness that's running through the first result you get if you tried looking up Talk Talk vs No Doubt).