what do you think of the English fan covers of papermoon and which version do you like the most if you do??
Yeah, I've listened to several.
I won't go into which ones I don't like and why, which...is most of them. Because I don't want to insult people's awesome efforts. But I'll say that generally the reasons I will end up disliking a cover are a collection of a few reasons: bad mixing; melody and/or rhythm departs too much from the original (I'll go into this more), translation that departs too much from the original.
That said, so far my favorite English cover is Caleb Hyles. And it's funny cuz I don't usually go for his stuff. But, it's a great mix, it sticks to the song overall, the translation does its best to use the actual translation where it can... Words such as "degraded" that you just wouldn't really see, for example. He kept in as much as made sense, I felt, and didn't poeticize it too much; he really tried to stay true.
And of course, his surprise switch to Japanese at the end was great.
Do YOU have a favorite cover??
And what I said about melody/rhythm departing too much... We have to remember, it's often the case that the songwriter wrote those specific notes/melody for a reason and so changing them can in fact change the entire feel of the song.
I'll give an example.... "Comet" from Steven Universe. Every single note and rhythm she wrote very precisely.
Some say I have no direction
That I'm a light speed distraction
But that's a knee-jerk reaction
On that last word, reaction, the melody drops an interval of a fourth and the drop there in combination with the lyrics is meant to show Greg's dejection. Also the initial word of the second and third lines there, the melody starts an octave below before rising. This adds to the anchoring feel of those lyrics, of negative things that have been spoken over him.
Still, this is the final frontier
Everything is so clear
To my destiny I steer
The initial melodic notes of the second and third line here stay in the same octave, making the melody sound more confident (ironically the same note though... makes you wonder if there's a subliminal doubting in Greg of his choices) but with that confidence added from the constancy of the initial melodic notes, each conclusion sounds more certain, more hopeful, even though the chordal structure is the same.
So, melody matters. Don't change it. (Like every single cover of Comet out there... I like none.)
I could go into the importance of the super-triplet rhythm of Comet but...this was supposed to be about Papermoon. ๐
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Sorry sorry sorry, Comet is just like...one of the best songs ever written in terms of how the music represents a character... It's a modern Wagnerian approach and boy does it succeed.
