…. a splendid term invented (or at any rate used) by one of our number for the deadly process whereby a jolly and/or raucous pop song gets turned into an oh-so-earnest cover version, usually with authentic acoustic instruments and miserable white-person vocals.
So perhaps this story was always going to happen and has maybe even happened before. I personally don’t feel The Portraits have got a leg to stand on – Electric Dreams is a very well-known song and giving it this kind of treatment and using it in this kind of ad is hardly a game-changing idea.
“You copied my cover version”…. really? This is like John Cale suing Alexandra Burke over Hallelujah.
Thoughts?
Moose the Mooche says
What a mean spirited post.
Here’s Pulp.
….or is it?
pawsforthought says
Didn’t a similar thing happen with Madness’ version of ‘It must be love?’ I forget what it was advertising, but the Nutty Boys didn’t get a penny out of it IIRC.
Moose the Mooche says
I think Madness’s It Must Be Love is the diametric opposite of John Lewising…. The original is wonderful and joyous but the Nutties put rocket boosters under it, bless’em.
pawsforthought says
Sorry, I meant that the cover version was covered by someone else, in the style of the cover. Don’t think it was for John Lewis though.
dai says
Well they wouldn’t make a penny out of it as they didn’t write the song.
davebigpicture says
It was used by a bank, re recorded in a Madness stylee. I was always under the impression they got an arrangement credit for their version.
http://marcoonthebass.blogspot.com/2009/05/it-must-be-love-story-behind-madness.html
nigelthebald says
Must be the time of year, Moosie, because I initially thought you’d written Jona Lewieing.
Moose the Mooche says
Dub-a-dub-a-dumm-dumm…..
Guiri says
This came on in the supermarket yesterday. Peak John Lewising I feel. Acoustic, slow, sensitive and utterly pointless. I googled him out of curiosity. He appears to be very famous though I’d never heard of him. Also a bit of a prat.
attackdog says
He is a bit of a prat, plays the sensitive white boy, overwrought renditions and with well documented ishoos. Great for the meejah.
Dig a bit deeper and he’s actually a very good songwriter and guitar player.
Black Type says
He broke Taylor’s heart, the bastard!
Moose the Mooche says
That’s his job, durrr! The only purpose that songwriters’ partners serve is to break their hearts so that we end up with breakup albums…. That shit’s been going down since Symphonie Fantastique, bro.
fentonsteve says
You’re missing the point, Moosey.
The Portraits? Nope, me neither – well, not until today. The power of news marketing.
Moose the Mooche says
At first I thought that it was assuming an alarming familiarity with the music of ELP….
dai says
Can’t bear to listen/watch that terrible twee stuff. Thankfully not being in the UK will not be hearing it every 10 minutes
johnw says
It’s OK. I’m sure I go some years having never heard it. I think they tend to be the sort of advert that’s so long and not branded until the end that I’ve already reached for my PC before they’re half way through. As they’re not alone with that technique, the whole lot tends to pass me by.
What I don’t really understand is how they think it raises sales. If I didn’t already have a Lloyds account and am more than happy with the website I certainly would make an effort to avoid them as they always seem to use awful tracks for their adverts.
Jaygee says
Pretty sure there was some similar kite flying about last year’s JL ad, too.
Like Dai, have never seen one of these ads – a record I hope to keep up for a good few Xmases yet
dai says
Here’s a commercial for the Canadian equivalent of John Lewis, The Bay. You may recognise somebody
davebigpicture says
Nope.
Moose the Mooche says
Is that Bri under the bed?
dai says
If you were to watch the excellent Schitt’s Creek …
garyt says
As we don’t have JL here in Norn Iron, the adverts have always passed me by. I’ve always referred to the covering of a song in a slow, ‘deep & meaningful’ arrangement as ‘Cowboy Junkying”.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Never mind John Cale, he didn’t write it anyway.
Moose the Mooche says
…yes…. was that a joke? Or a cover version of a joke? I am confusing.
Arthur Cowslip says
Oh, this kind of stuff ruins Christmas for me and makes me want to fire a submachine gun into a herd of reindeer. (Or better still, a herd of twee, sensitive singers with wispy voices and lightly strummed acoustic guitars).
I hate this trend, and it gets worse every year. I think it all started with that cover of Mad World for the film Donnie Darko about 20 years ago maybe? The difference is, that was brilliant (and still sounds brilliant) and was unexpected and new. But I’m done with them now.
Enough already!
duco01 says
Afterworders, I think this thread is in need of the REAL John Lewis (1920-2001), brilliant pianist of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Let’s have something from “The Wonderful World of Jazz” (1960):
fentonsteve says
When I first met her, the future Mrs F’s landlord was called Jonathan Lewis. What were his parents thinking?
davebigpicture says
When I worked in Farnham, the driver was called John Lewis.
dai says
My barber was John Lewis when I was a kid. Pretty common name in Wales. he specialised in a bowl cut.
Timbar says
I bought my Sony TV on eBay from John Lewis
“John Lewis don’t do second hand!”
“Mr John Lewis of East Molesey, Surrey – and he delivered it too”
Jaygee says
@Timbar
Wonder if he’d have offered to refund you the difference if you later saw another seller offering the same TV at a lower price
Sewer Robot says
I am morto!
One of my top ten albums of the year features a song billed as being from a John Lewis Christmas Ad..
(In my defence, we don’t get bombed with those ads over here, so – twee though it might be – it’s not been drilled into my head outside of the LP)
Iainiain says
This may have only been shown in Scotland(?) but it’s a remarkably cheeky rip-off of Ry Cooder’s recording of the song. So blatant that I wonder what the background to the advert is – did they pay Ry?
Iainiain says
Here’s Ry’s recording, for comparison’s sake:-
Moose the Mooche says
That sounds very much like “They wanted Ry but couldn’t afford him”.
Somebody, Levi’s I think, tried to get around this by using Screaming Jay Hawkins’s version of Heartattack and Vine . T Waits was not pleased and they had to publicly apologise. I suspect Jay didn’t mind, what with all them nippers to pay for…
Hamlet says
I seem to recall Lucozade using a Prodigy soundalike in the 90s. The Prodigy’s Liam Howlett contacted them, saying they wanted a crate of Lucozade in compensation – and they got it.
yorkio says
I remember an interview in Sound on Sound with Tot Taylor, who used to run Compact Records, who was at one point the main source of those soundalikes. The one that I best remember was the Johnny Thunders-alikey version of Great Big Kiss which was on an ad for washing machines or some such, which somehow cleverly copped the idea of the tune and the general slapdash feel of the original without actually being a cover, and hence not incurring any royalties.