Ruby Isle covers Headlights
(taken from kindercore.com)
Ruby Isle - Cherry Tulips
As luck would have it, we were in the middle of remixing Headlights’ “Put us Back Together Right” for their upcoming remix album and their track “Cherry Tulips” went to #1 on elbo.ws. Needless to say it has been quite a Headlights week for us. We were really happy to see them at number one because we are actually pretty good friends and it is great to get to cover one of our friend’s songs! Here is what Mark had to say about the track:
“We all spend a lot of time trying to figure out what songs are about. My friend, Lisa, got all bent up cause tulips don’t grow on trees. I said “The singer is using her artistic license. She is so in love with this person that she wants to all the cherry trees to blossom fat red tulips.” This woman, Erin Fein, is pining all night for Cherry Tulips. But, there are no such things - she is overcome with a reckless abandon, and there is an earth shattering hurricane of
cuteness. What will she do? She wants the whole sea! And if she does in fact get it, where will the cherry dolphins swim?
Structurally, the tune follows a straight forward major chord progression with a minor 6 thrown in for good measure. The middle of the tune is host to a turnaround at the 4th and 5th then back to the refrain. Combine that with the 108bpm March in double time and its aural heroine time. I flirted for a while with dropping this cover into the relative minor, as an example of how chords account for 50% of the narrative in a lyric, but I was feeling bittersweet about our covers project coming due, so I scrapped it. On a production level, this tune comes closest to the Beach House song we covered earlier in the project, real gooey and wet, all verbed out and what not. Our version is sped up, sort of, to 120. The feel of the song totally changed when the drums were cut to half time - that’s probably the most dramatic change in the song. Oh, and the original doesn’t have a telephone solo in it either! Thank you, Headlights, for writing such a lovely song for us to cover. Maybe I’ll write a song called Cherry Dolphins. hmmm.”
As I said, I was just putting the finishing touches on the remix as this one went number one so it was very easy for me to transition over to the new track. I actually didn’t listen to the original before I started working on the cover. I figured remixing them would give me enough of the sound I needed to create the backdrop for the cover. Mark sent me guitar and vocals and I built a simple little pop song around them. This is probably the most straightforward of all of our covers and is actually probably the most “kindercore” song ruby isle has ever recorded. Mark’s little addition of “Road to Nowhere” was a pleasant suprise to me as Mark and I grew up listening to Talking Heads records together. It was really fun to throw in that little treat. Actually, ever cover in this series actually references another song aside from the cover we are doing. If you are bored it could be a fun little game to go back and listen to all of them and find the secrets…
As luck would have it, we were in the middle of remixing Headlights’ “Put us Back Together Right” for their upcoming remix album and their track “Cherry Tulips” went to #1 on elbo.ws. Needless to say it has been quite a Headlights week for us. We were really happy to see them at number one because we are actually pretty good friends and it is great to get to cover one of our friend’s songs! Here is what Mark had to say about the track:
“We all spend a lot of time trying to figure out what songs are about. My friend, Lisa, got all bent up cause tulips don’t grow on trees. I said “The singer is using her artistic license. She is so in love with this person that she wants to all the cherry trees to blossom fat red tulips.” This woman, Erin Fein, is pining all night for Cherry Tulips. But, there are no such things - she is overcome with a reckless abandon, and there is an earth shattering hurricane of
cuteness. What will she do? She wants the whole sea! And if she does in fact get it, where will the cherry dolphins swim?
Structurally, the tune follows a straight forward major chord progression with a minor 6 thrown in for good measure. The middle of the tune is host to a turnaround at the 4th and 5th then back to the refrain. Combine that with the 108bpm March in double time and its aural heroine time. I flirted for a while with dropping this cover into the relative minor, as an example of how chords account for 50% of the narrative in a lyric, but I was feeling bittersweet about our covers project coming due, so I scrapped it. On a production level, this tune comes closest to the Beach House song we covered earlier in the project, real gooey and wet, all verbed out and what not. Our version is sped up, sort of, to 120. The feel of the song totally changed when the drums were cut to half time - that’s probably the most dramatic change in the song. Oh, and the original doesn’t have a telephone solo in it either! Thank you, Headlights, for writing such a lovely song for us to cover. Maybe I’ll write a song called Cherry Dolphins. hmmm.”
As I said, I was just putting the finishing touches on the remix as this one went number one so it was very easy for me to transition over to the new track. I actually didn’t listen to the original before I started working on the cover. I figured remixing them would give me enough of the sound I needed to create the backdrop for the cover. Mark sent me guitar and vocals and I built a simple little pop song around them. This is probably the most straightforward of all of our covers and is actually probably the most “kindercore” song ruby isle has ever recorded. Mark’s little addition of “Road to Nowhere” was a pleasant suprise to me as Mark and I grew up listening to Talking Heads records together. It was really fun to throw in that little treat. Actually, ever cover in this series actually references another song aside from the cover we are doing. If you are bored it could be a fun little game to go back and listen to all of them and find the secrets…
posted by Jared at 1/22/2008
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