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Reviews (1)
04 September 2006
I Am Sam movie soundtrack
2 of 2 found this helpful First off, I'm an unabashed Beatles fan. I saw them in 1966 and it's an event that I'll tell my grandchildren about one day. However, I am not so parochial that I think their music should or cannot be reinterpreted by other artists. I was taken by the idea that these 17 different artists were approached after 'negotiations broke down' (a quote from a Beatles lyric itself: You Never Give Me Your Money)over using the original songs. They all had 3 weeks to record, engineer and master these tracks.
I came away with a strong curiosity about this process. Where the artists given a choice of songs? If not, how did the label decide which artists would get what songs? Did they recieve any submissions that they rejected? If so, by whom?
In general, after several playings I would group the performances into two categories; first the artists who obviously were proud to be picked for the project and respect the music being interpreted. The second and thankfully the smaller category is what seemed to be the 'let's see if we can make a name for ourselves' in the Jimmie Hendrix Baseball World Series Star Spangled Banner vein. Yuk! Maybe there's a thin line between interpretation and sacrilege and several songs, dare I say, not only crossed it but stepped over it shamelessly.
In the first category, the notables were Ben Folds stirring renditon of Golden Slumbers--the shame is that the song is so short. His piano and vocal are just right for this sweet lullaby. Eddie Vedder's rough, gutteral vocal is perfect for You've Got To Hide Your Love Away. It was good to hear him after, for me at least, a long absence. Rufus Wainwright, Sarah McLachlan and Aimee Mann lent very emotional renditions as well.
Curiously, Mother Nature's Son by Sheryl Crow is one of the few cuts that appeared to suffer from the 'rush job'. The first verse is almost unrecognizable as her work and yet the rest of the song is sweet vindication and the highlight of the CD.
In the barely listenable category is Chocolate Genius' butchery of John Lennon's ode to his mother, Julia. Such touching personal poetry should fall into the No One Should Cover arena even if valiently attempted. Sadly, this isn't even close to touching but rather banal and dishonest. Failures for other reasons are Grandaddy's Revolution (a song covered much better several years ago curiously by one of the other album contributors, Stereophonic on an album by Jools Holland), Help! by Howie Day, and Nick Cave's version of Let It Be.
Also notable in a negative vein is Ben Harper's retelling of Strawberry Field's Forever. Arguably the most musically intricate of the vast exploratory Fab Four later-career catalog, it seems as if the track is almost too faithful to the meandering elasticity of the original cut leading me to wonder how this recreation could be accomplished without musical plagerism. I may have used the word 'dishonest' too early in this review. Call it either sampling gone wild or at best passable kareoke.
So an uneven effort here probably destined to be thus given it's hasty origins but there's more good than bad. It was nice to hear these songs, as always. I was happy to see the full female representation but saddened by some of the artist's display of wrongheaded opportunism.