Ahh, my favorite song by Reunion. (Bebe Bumble and the Stingers, Mott the Hoople, Ray Charles singers…) Of course, it’s the only song I know by Reunion, so even if I hated it, it’d still be my favorite song by them. Tracey Ullman covered it as well.
On a side note, It’s The End of The World As We Know It was also covered in 1997, by Great Big Sea, a jovial celtic-alternative group from Newfoundland.
Without remarking on the quality of these songs, I’ve always placed them in the category of “pop rap” or “talk pop.”
Haha, a little off-topic but I worked in a local museum gift shop where we had to play music all the time… however, we were only allowed to listen to music we sold. Great Big Sea was frequently on, and once as I sang along to their version of It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (gosh, that’s annoying to capitalise!), one of my coworkers who was a couple of years older than me (she would have been about 22, in 2000) was amazed that I knew all the words.
Me: Yeah, I think it’s my favourite REM song.
Her: Oh, they played it too?
I was amazed by this.
Anyway, as far as that particular song goes, I’d just call it ROCK MUSIC. I’m all about generic labels. Besides, it IS sung rather than rapped - it’s just mostly sung on all one note. I find most rap to sound more like talking or shouting.
Likewise with We Didn’t Start The Fire. It has a melody as well. Sorta.
They’re all OK except for Mr Joel’s effort. I’m pretty sure he listened to Subterranean Homesick Blues over and over one night and then transcribed his word salad without editing.
Look at some of the crap rhymes:
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again
I have been trying, for a long time, to find the line between rap/hiphop and the Rolling Stones’ Shattered. In my own head, it’s a big river. Others may see only a creek.
Not that this really answers the question, nor am I trying to, but I think Aerosmith, with Walk This Way, essentially gave birth to the current rock/rap music that’s so popular today, i.e. Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, et al. Pioneers they are, yes indeedy!
How about Murray Head’s popular version of “One Night in Bangkok”?
*Bangkok – Oriental setting
And the city don’t know that the city is getting
The creme de la creme of the chess world in a
Show with everything but Yul Brynner …
*
Anyway, after taking my meds ;), I’d say none of those songs are rap. They’re constructed like rock songs in every way except for the singing; I don’t think they have any hallmark elements of rap. One Week in particular has a very normal pop-song chorus.
I think yellowval is right if he/she is talking about the Aerosmith/Run DMC version of Walk This Way.
World War XIV, my first Sony
Beatles wrote the Nike song and called it macaroni
Billy Jean Burger King chauvinist pig pen
U.S. Army only wants a few straight men
I agree with the first sentence, but I thought rap developed more or less independantly. According to a thread about rap somewhere on this board (I can’t find it while they’re still reindexing the boards), the original purpose of the MC (rapper) was to get the crowd at a dance club worked up and excited while promoting the DJs next event. If so, it has more in common geneologically with routines warming up a crowd, carnival barking, and sales patter than talking blues. I’m curious if htere really is a connection, or if you’re just assuming that there is.
As for what to call that type of music, I call it “rap-influeced rock [or pop]”. Unless it predates rap, in which case, I supose I’d call it “rock [or pop] that sounds like it was rap influenced even though it actually predates rap”. No one knows what the talking blues are, so it wouldn’t do any good to call it “talking blues-influenced rock”, even if that’s what it is.