Mostly Music Covers

Paul McCartney's iconic song "Yesterday", is now inspiration for a movie.


The Movie 'Yesterday' is due out in theatres on June 28th. Looks like it will be a fun movie, anything with a lot of Beatles songs has to be good. Initial reviews aren't very great but I recall Bohemian Rhapsody was in the same spot, seems it did very well at the box office and at awards shows. Though in this case 'Yesterday' is not autobiographical it is fiction, still one has to think a Beatles Soundtrack is going to do as well or better. At the very least it will remind us of how great The Beatles actually were and that songs still hold up today. The plot of the movie is based on a struggling musician being the only one who remembers 'The Beatles' existed 'yesterday' as 'today' they are absent from everyone's memory. It's a brilliant premise and poses the question, what if these songs did just come out now, how popular would they be? If nothing…

As in the 'Couples that Sing' post, I've mentioned some duets in past posts, specifically the number one duet according to Billboard.com, Endless Love.


If you follow the Billboard.com list next is a song by Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson which I have chosen not to add, but here is a cover by Louis Delort & Atef Sedkaoui, 'The Voice France' in 2012. Rounding out the top five are "The Boy Is Mine" (1998) Brandy & Monica, "Ebony And Ivory" Paul McCartney once again with Stevie Wonder (1982), and "Dilemma", Nelly & Kelly Rowland (2002).

If we look at RollingStone.com from 2014 the 'duets' readers poll (list) looks like this; "Under Pressure" (1981) written by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon and David Bowie, the duet being Freddie and David though I think the rest of Queen was in on that song as well, followed by "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (1981) performed by Stev…

Couples (that sing together don't always stay together)

There have been many 'couples' that sing together and I have mentioned several already in previous posts such as; Johnny Cash and June Carter, Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill and Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood all from Country Music.

While anecdotally we can say that Country Music has the most couples that sing together, and from what I've seen this is indeed the case, what about other genres? In looking at these couples it seems singing together is not a formula for staying together-at least in most cases.

Ok I will get this one out of the way real quick, Jay-Z and Beyoncé! And despite their initial assertions they were brother and sister, Jack and Meg White (White Stripes) were married from 1996 to 2000, but performed together until 2011 (not as an unusual situation as you might think). Carly Simon and James Taylor were married from 1972-1983. Then there's the whole ABBA thing wi…

Women of World Music

When it comes to music outside of my usual purview, generally that being for the most part Canada, the U.S. and the British Isles, this is what I'll refer to as 'World Music'. Vague definitions aside it is easy for me to decide where to begin.

In 1915 in Belleville, Paris, France, a little girl named Édith Giovanna Gassion was abandoned by her mother at birth and dropped off by her father on his way to fight in WW1 to be raised by his mother in her brothel in Bernay, Normandy. There is a story she (and others) had told that she was blind from the ages of 3 to 7 when she was miraculously cured after a religious pilgrimage. By age 14 she had left the brothel and rejoined her father who was a street performing acrobat. She soon met her half sister Simone "Mômone" Berteaut and in 1930 the two began singing and performing together, earning enough to rent their own room at the Grand Hôtel de Clermont. Soon after Édith's boyfriend moved in to t…