Oh my god another cover song
Oh my god another cover song
My version of "Streets of Philadelphia" from the archives
I have so many covers. If you follow me on social media, you know I’ve been posting them regularly. But I keep finding more.
I’m like an old cat lady just hoarding these things. I can’t even walk through my kitchen anymore because these goddamn cover songs are everywhere.
There was a period (it may still be a thing, I don’t know) where all the music in movie trailers were covers, so I would occasionally record a few and send them out to supervisors in hopes of landing one. The payout can be big, so it was worth a shot. I never landed anything, as I ignored the formula entirely, which was honestly pretty simple. Just couldn’t bring myself to follow it. I’ll teach it to you…
First, find a really upbeat pop song from the 70s or 80s. We’ll use Culture Club’s 1983 smash, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.” Now find a piano. It doesn’t have to be a good one, as we’re only going to use one note. Find the lowest note on that piano, and press down on that note. Now, if you’re a woman, I want you to sing the hook of the song in a really baby-ish, whispery voice. You don’t have even have to really sing it. You can just sort of speak it, but leave big, dramatic pauses between each word. “Do…you…really….want…to…………..hurt me.” If you’re a guy, just trade out the whispery shit for a vaguely southern affectation, and sing like you swallowed a bunch of gravel. That’s really it. If you want, you can add in a bunch of dramatic swoops and swishes and random reverb hits that sound like someone closing the kitchen cabinets in an empty home. But the editors are probably going to do that themselves after they tear your song apart and only use two lines anyway. If all goes according to planned, you’ll receive a fat check in the mail within the next 2 to 18 months.
Instead of paying attention to any of that, I would just pick a song I liked and do my thing with it and then hope that the entire industry would hear it and say, “Yup. This is what we’ve been waiting for. This is the guy.” That didn’t happen. As a side note, I’m very lucky that the music supervisors I’ve worked with are really, really talented people who have placed my songs in many shows, trailers, and films. This trend is not their fault, as they unfortunately, like many of us, have to answer other people.
The lyrics to “Streets of Philadelphia” aren’t really relatable to anything unless they were remaking the movie, Philadelphia, or doing another show or movie about the city of Philadelphia. I really kind of cornered myself with this one. But I hope you enjoy it, as I still enjoyed making it.