Calum Scott – Dancing On My Own

“Some songs should be be held on a pedestal, and rendered immune from John Lewis-ification.”

Tim: Thomas. You know very well that (a) Fridays are currently reserved for tropical house and (b) this song is a crime against the entirety of Scandinavia, so you’d better have a good reason for wanting to post this today.

Tom: The first part, I’ll resolve later. The second part… well, our anonymous reader sends this in, saying “a piano-ballad-cover of a Robyn EDM track: What can possibly go wrong”?

Tim: Everything. No, seriously, EVERYTHING.

Tom: Well, for starters, this:

Tim: Most sensible tweet of the year, that.

Tom: He’s got a great voice. I can’t fault that voice. It’s a heck of a performance, perhaps apart from that glottal stop on “better”. And I think there’s a lot of room for interpretations and cover versions of songs, even if “emotional male piano ballad” is a bit overplayed. But the original of this is — let’s be clear here — a BANGER, and just because you’ve lost some of the instrumentation it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily more emotional.

Tim: No; it does, on the other hand, mean it’s necessarily more boring. And you’re right, there is a lot of room for reinterpretations, but some songs should be be held on a pedestal, and rendered immune from John Lewis-ification. Dancing On My Own is one of them.

Tom: And let’s face it, even if I don’t agree with some of the Internet that this cover version is necessarily a crime against music, that hanging, unresolved ending certainly is.

Tim: Yes. So let’s not do the same with this post. Let’s resolve it properly. First, we’ll add a bit of bio by pointing out that the most interesting sentence on Calum Wikipedia page tells us he “won a local competition, Hull Daily Mail’s Star search 2013, after which he joined a Maroon 5 tribute band, called ‘Maroon 4’” and second, realise that that tells us all we need to know about him. And then finish with this.

Tom: And then, let’s finish with this. Because, yes, you could argue that Calum’s cover is unnecessary — but you know what’s definitely unnecessary? Adding beats back in by getting Tiesto to do an uninspired remix of it. If you want a proper comparison, this shows just how much better the original is.

Tim: Oh. Oh, man.