In the same vein as Guilhem's contrafactum, this cover of trap queen converts a famous hip-hop song into a love ballad. It has the same lyrics and melody as the original song, but a completely different video and style. Here, Josh Levi sings with only a piano accompaniment. The camera is centered on him, with no cuts to other people or images - unlike the original music video - showcasing his emotional expressions.
Here, we see the use of Nico's version of the Jackson Browne song 'These Days' in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums. What is interesting about this scene and what is makes it so moving is that it co=opts the regret that is the prevailing sentiment of the originial song and contrasts it against what we know about these two characters in the film to turn it into a nostalgic lament for a lost love. Much like we see in Guilhem's crusade lyrics, the ambivalece of the original lyrics is excised by placing the song in a new context.
Ultralight Beam Performance
Meghan Trainor's first music video from her new album, "Thank You," is a far departure from her previous music videos. This, of course, is the video for "No," which is set in an abandoned factory with Trainor and her back-up dancers in tight-fitting black or dark work-clothes.
In Rihanna's "What's My Name?", we see a dialogue happening between her and Drake mostly on sex but also on why Drake is such a great partner for her. In contrast to the dialogue songs, the conversation here is not shown explicitly has Drake only speaks in the beginning of the song, leaving the rest of the talking to Rihanna. However, one must notice that in Rihanna's first verse, she introduces the reasons for why Drake is such a good companion for her in terms of sex, which could have been placed at the beginning of the song.
Putting Taylor Swift, a popular country music artist, and the renounced trobaritz together may not seem obvious. When considering the themes within the Comtessa’ de Dia’s lyric number 33, they are also extremely prevalent in country music today. At first, my plan was to perform a piece of the Comtessa’s lyric set in a contemporary context. I was going to write a musical where the themes explored in the Comtessa’s lyrics formed the plot. However, instead I decided to use clips of contempory performance to illustrate the action of the lyric for me.
In "The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past," Taruskin argues that the twentieth-century impulse towards "authenticity" arose from a modernist trend towards impersonal abstraction whereas what he terms "vitality" was largely left by the wayside.
Lovers parting at dawn reminded me of dew drops on grass and how they evaporate with the rising of the sun- two objects literally separating because of the dawn and what follows. I couldn't find any videos of dew drops evaporating from blades of grass or leaves, but I did find this evaporation timelapse of some water on pavement. It sparkles brightly before shrinking into a corner, trying to stay as long as it can before dissapating, leaving evidence of its stay.
Departure at Dawn, modern version. Only the moment of the day links the separation at down typically represented in the alba and this modern video. Here, the song represents a personal disillusionment combined with a critique of society and has nothing to do with the romantic separation of lovers. Why then the need to represent such a separation? Yet, you just have to reduce the volume and use your imagination in order to recreate a modern version of the lovers’ separation at down.
