She also appears to have pretty impressive taste in covers. Her biggest hit to date is a cover of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love," and she's also covered Phoenix's "1901," which I'd consider two of the very best pop songs of the past five years.
So it bugs me a little that, as impressive as she is, I can't help but hear these as distinctly inferior covers of great songs. Musically, they're just fine- both are very well-sung (particularly "Skinny Love"), competently played, and effectively set a mood- but to me, the stripped-down arrangements seem to have taken most of the life out of the originals.
At first listen, I found this hard to reconcile with my opinion that both originals are great for melodic reasons. Before I heard Birdy's versions, my highest praise for the originals would have been that their melodies are strong enough to manage the difficult feat of sounding instantly memorable on the first listen and still sounding fresh and engaging on the twentieth. But if that's true, why wouldn't I hear Birdy's simpler presentations as simply reinforcing that strength?
The answer, I think, is that I implicitly define melody as something more than just the notes strung together. What I hear as strong melody is typically those melodies fleshed out with additional qualities of rhythm, harmony, performance, and arrangement, and it's those qualities that lend the original versions much of their power.
Of the two covers, "Skinny Love" clearly sounds more similar to the original; all the basic melodic pieces are there. But Bon Iver's album version simply does more with those pieces than Birdy's. Rather than quarter notes on the piano, Justin Vernon's accompanying himself with a syncopated guitar rhythm that, to these ears adds more momentum and power. Birdy's accompaniment also uses very stable harmonic structures, while Vernon's guitar flavors the melody by occasionally breaking down into dissonance or unexpected minor chords (the 2:20 mark, for example). And Vernon's vocals are adding more as well; the way he hits the word "told" on each line of the chorus lends a power Birdy's smoother vocal performance lacks.
By contrast, the "1901" cover doesn't even sound all that much like the original song, because a lot of what Phoenix does to lend melodic power- on this song and others- comes in their substantial ability to arrange multiple, interlocking melodies, rhythms, and tones. The strongest, example, for me, comes at the 0:40 mark (and each verse thereafter). The vocals, overlaid on the high, fast guitar melody, overlaid on the stable five-note synthetic bass riff that anchors the entire song, accompanied by a drum pattern that hits entirely different beats than any of the three melodies, creates what I find to be a tremendously effective, four-part dynamic. Any one of those four lines would probably sound fine on their own, and two or three of them together would sound very good, but it's the ability to integrate all four so organically that allows Phoenix to create a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts.
In short, Birdy loses power, to my ears, because she's using such a limited range of her musical options compared to the originals. To repeat, her stripped-down versions still create an effective mood on its own, and there are clearly plenty of listeners who find that perfectly effective. But to me, this makes clear that an essential aspect of my personal taste is the use of a large musical toolbox. There's any number of different ways of doing so, from Justin Vernon doing a lot with a simple arrangement to Phoenix's maximalist approach, but perhaps one way I define "craft" is the effective use of numerous different musical nuances.
Let's call it "Birdy's Law." I'll admit, it's partly just that I'd enjoy someone arguing that Birdy's law is not governed by reason, but I think it works anyway. I'll put the law to the test again in future posts.
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