Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Transmillennial American Slut Pop

Fountains of Wayne have a new album called Out-Of-State Plates, mentioned here. It's a 2-CD collection of unreleased material spanning their career, plus a couple of new songs. Most of it is really good, some of it is great, and at least one song just plain sucks.

But, that's not why I'm here. A cover of "..Baby One More Time", originally made famous by Britney Spears, is featured on the second CD. It's really entertaining in the same way as Cake's version of "I Will Survive". Slower tempo, with a deadpan delivery of the lyrics.

It accomplished one remarkable feat: I wanted to hear the Britney Spears version. Surely not what they intended, but the comparison fascinates me.

Plus, anything that contributes to Britney's career is probably good at this point. The unintentional comedy of it all is worthwhile.

3 comments:

Kevin said...

OK, which song do you think flat out sucks?

There are a couple other good covers on the FOW disks, including ELO and a Gene Pitney-penned Ricky Nelson tune.

Ron said...

California Sex Lawyer is awful. I know it's a joke, but it's really annoying.

The ELO cover is great, as is the Ricky Nelson song.

Kevin said...

The most annoying part of CA Sex Lawyer is that it gets stuck in your head and you end up walking around all day singing "California sex lawyer, oh yeah!"

The ELO cover is strong. And the Ricky Nelson/Gene Pitney song proves they could play any style, which they confirmed on Welcome, Interstate Managers.