Battle of the Bands ~ Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma

First of all... yes, I'm home again. Alive and in one piece. Not exactly migraine-free, but you can't have everything. I'm really glad I pre-wrote everything that posted in July and early August before I left. Otherwise, the posting would've been very slim around here (as in nearly nil). I kinda wish I'd decided on my Battle of the Bands for the 15th back in June, too. Yep. It's been that sort of insane here.

So... I spent some time wandering around on YouTube just to see what I'd find. There's always tons to find. Doesn't mean it's all useful for Battle of the Bands, but still it's interesting. Turns out I thought I was going in one direction and ended up somewhere else. I'd tell you that's shocking, but it really isn't.

I ended up (quite by accident) in these backyard sessions that Miley Cyrus recorded in 2012. For those of you not familiar, this was before the MTV awards in which she cut her hair (not attractive, but not over-the-top ridiculous) and stepped onto the profanity gesture wagon that many people, myself included, found extremely offensive (not attractive AND over-the-top ridiculous). This foray into offensiveness landed much media attention (which was surely the intention), but begs the question of talent versus antics. Is it possible to achieve superstardom in this day and age without going beserker? It also begs another question: how helpful are the people behind the scenes in trying to help a singer achieve success? Are these string pullers really helpful? In the end, what do they do to the song (by completely messing up the singer)? Miley isn't the first performer to ask this question. Rather ironically, she recorded her cover of Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma before her "song" was irrevocably pushed into the insane corner. It makes me wonder if people have a sixth sense of what's coming before it arrives. (I kinda think they do.)

If you haven't guessed, the song for today is Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma. This song was new to me. I'm fairly certain that the original performer of this song was Melanie Safka. So, let's give her version a listen. Yep, this is contender number one.




Pretty catchy, no? Now, here is Miley singing the same song back in 2012... before they took her song and twisted it all up.




Is that good? Is that good for everybody?


We've got so many new Battle of the Bands players that I'm having difficulty keeping up. (We post a new battle on the 1st and 15th of each month.) For those who've been following this feature/blog for a while now, can you believe that once upon a time -- for a long time-- there were only five of us??? Well, now the list grows each battle. So, if your name is not on here and you're participating, please leave me a message in the comments. Thanks for your patience!

 Also, please vote for the version of this song you prefer. If you want to get into the Ins and Outs of why you like one better than the other... I LOVE long comments!

For more Battle of the Bands fun, check out the other BOTB bloggers to vote on their battles:

• Far Away Series 
• Stephen T. McCarthy's Battle of the Bands Blog
• Tossing it Out
• DiscConnected (temporarily disconnected from BoTB)
• This Belle Rocks
• Mike's Ramblings
• Curious as a Cathy 
• Book Lover
• The Sound of One Hand Typing
• dcrelief ~ Battle of the Bands 
• Cherdo on the Flipside 
• Angels Bark 
• THE DOGLADY'S DEN 
• Jingle Jangle Jungle 
• WOMEN: We Shall Overcome 
• NovelBrews
• J.A. Scott
• Quiet Laughter

Battle of the Bands ~ Wrecking Ball

Today is the 15th and time for Battle of the Bands! Can you believe that I have been at this for about a year now??? Battle of the Bands. Not blogging. That blows my mind.

Ironically, I don't have you guys and your voting tendencies any more figured out now than when I started. Hahahaha! In other words, you always surprise me!

I hesitated to post this particular battle because I thought it would lean heavily in one direction. And then I considered all of the battles of the past, and my ability to predict an outcome, and I decided to give it a whirl.

Miley Cyrus. There. I said it. That girl has been so outrageous (and let's face it, disgusting, and crude) that even folks who used to like her are holding down gagging noises, except for teenagers. They love that stuff. There are some celebrities (singers, actors, etc.) that annoy me so much that I refuse to buy their music or pay money to watch their movies. That is our right, you know? We don't have to financially support folks we don't like.

BUT, Battle of the Bands isn't about anyone making money. Your vote here doesn't equate to royalty checks. So, this is the time to set aside our feelings about the person and focus strictly on the music. And it may gall us to vote for someone we don't like, but if they did the better job...

Yeah, so you can see why I haven't put up this battle for a long time. It would be tempting to vote against Miley Cyrus on Principle. The thing is that we aren't comparing Principles here. It's just the music.
 
The song is Wrecking Ball. If this song is new to you, all the better. However, I STRONGLY CAUTION you to NEVER EVER EVER watch Miley's video of this song. I regret it. Sorely regret it. There are images in that video that I cannot erase from my brain. I don't want you to suffer that same fate. So DON'T DO IT. I am posting a Lyric Video. You can all relax. It's just words.

The cover of this song is by Boyce Avenue (featuring Diamond White). I don't know much about Boyce Avenue, except that they are a cover band. Their tendency is to strip them down a bit (bad visual coming after Miley... sorry). Acoustic. That is the word I was seeking.

Enough yakking. Let's just listen, shall we?

Miley Cyrus with Wrecking Ball...



Boyce Avenue (featuring Diamond White)...


For more Battle of the Bands fun, check out the other BOTB bloggers to vote on their battles:

• Far Away Series
• Stephen T. McCarthy's Battle of the Bands Blog
• Tossing it Out
• DiscConnected
• The Creative Outlet of Strat Player 
• Mike's Ramblings
• Donna Hole
• Curious as a Cathy 
• The Sound of One Hand Typing
• Alex J. Cavanaugh 

Now, is the critical moment. It is time to vote for your favorite version of this song. I even encourage you to leave me long comment explaining all the ins and outs of why you voted as you did! 

On Miley Cyrus and Adulthood

You know me.  I must weigh in on the Miley Cyrus debacle at the VMA Awards.

Before I get to her though, I want to talk about me.  And I want to declare loudly to the world that I am so thankful that the Internet didn't exist when I was 20 years old.  Or texting.  Or phones with cameras or video.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.

When I went off to college, I wanted to be an adult.  So, I started doing things that I was certain made me adult (and also things that I wasn't allowed to do at home).  I embraced the F-Word like a long-lost friend and celebrated it's versatility.  What other word could be used as a noun, verb, adverb, and adjective?  It had to be the Best Word Ever, so I used it fluently and frequently.  I also added all of the other "bad words" to my vocabulary to round it all out.  In fact, I could speak almost entirely in curse words and not miss a beat.  Why?  Because I was now an Adult.

Here is a picture of me freshman year.  Check out the lack of smile and overall snarky look.  That is what cool looks like when you are 18 in the 80s.  Or so I thought.  And it also screams Adult, no?

One of my other favorite pastimes was drinking excessively.  That is soooo Adult, isn't it?  The fact that I was tiny and completely unable to handle my alcohol was irrelevant.  It was a Coming of Age Thing that made me sophisticated and witty, right?  Sadly no.  It made me stupid.  As I said, so glad that there were no phone cameras back in the 80s.  Kids who shoot for adulthood by drinking and cursing are WannaBes.  Real adults Know Better.

When I moved to New York City and got a job in publishing it was  shock to discover that no one cursed like a sailor on the job.  In fact, no one cursed at all.  It sunk in pretty fast that Real Adults don't actually spout the F-words like a faucet left on full stream.  In order to tame my own language at work, I had to curb it at home.  Serious adjustment.  Why?  Because that is what Adults do.

Other lessons came harder.  People who can't handle their drink (like me) still like to drink.  Especially if they are living in the City That Never Sleeps.  Turns out that if I wanted to be functional at work I needed to sleep during the week.  Ah... but that left the weekends for me to show off how Adult I was.  My friend and roommate had been doing this for one year longer than I and knew where the Good Clubs were.  She even lent me her Club Clothes so that we could go out.

That looked a little bit like this:

I couldn't understand why we would go to these clubs and I would meet these guys who kept getting all Handsy with me.  It was terrible.  The other really bad part of this equation was that I didn't know how to handle it.  I had zero ability to draw a boundary and was unwilling to hurt anyone's feelings by indicating that I wasn't interested.  (This all dated back to my feelings of unworthiness from junior high and high school where people had no trouble hurting my feelings,)  In the end, my friend would bail me out of the Bad Situation by assailing The Octopus with a stream of F-words and he would go away.

After several rounds of this, I understood the common denominator here was Me and The Clothes.  I told my friend I would still go with her, but from this point on I was going casual.  Jeans and a blouse worked for me.  That did indeed solve the problem.  I still met people... just not Handsy ones.  Yeah, I had to act and look like an Adult in order to get treated like one.

I am going to assume that Miley Cyrus put on that performance at the VMAs because she wanted to show the world that she was no longer Hannah Montana, the Kid.  She was an Adult now.  All she proved was that she was Trying To Be An Adult.  Shame on all of the people who are supposed to be helping her make the transition.  Apparently none of them know what an actual Adult looks like either, or that train wreck wouldn't have happened.  The Good News... even people who go through years of bad decision-making, like me, of WannaBe Adult behavior eventually figure out what Actual Adult Behavior looks like.  There's still hope for you, Miley.