Strange how sometimes memories attached to music differ in different countries. Though I was born in 1968 and a bit too young to remember her in her prime, I always knew her song “Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma” and her cover of “Ruby Tuesday”. These seem to have been her biggest hits in Germany, “Ruby Tuesday” still is regularly played on oldies stations. “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)” though, I’ve never heard.
ETA: I just did listen to the two latter songs, and they are both awful, while I still like “Look What…” and “Ruby Tuesday”.
Thanks ever so for posting that, Lover’s Cross is one of my favorite songs, and I didn’t know she has done this beautiful cover.
That being said, here is my favorite of hers. One of my favorite worship tracks ever. RIP Melanie.
Yep, same here. I hadn’t heard “Brand New Key” until it was used in Boogie Nights, but I remember “Look What They’ve Done to My Song” really well from the 70s, and I always liked it.
If she ‘ruined her career and lost credibility’, that says more about the audience and her contemporaries if true.
Brand New Key isn’t a novelty song. Its damn clever and a good song, and as far as what it’s trying to do, its 11/10.
I know more Melanie songs off the top of my head then I do Carole King written AND sung songs. More then Joni Mitchell. More then Judy Collins. She made 32 albums. I’d say she 'did all right for a girl".
It was Cher’s cover of this that I heard first as a kid. Animator John Wilson did a ton of animated music videos, many of which aired on the Sonny and Cher show. I was a little too young to remember that show, but they used to run many of these videos on HBO and Nickelodeon (before it got commercials) between programs/movies. This was one of them. I really like Cher’s vocals, the arrangement, and the cute visuals.
