I never thought I’d write a headline like that, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones have teamed up to cover the 1958 Everly Brothers album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us.
Maybe covering the covers that the Everly Brothers did in the 50s is a bit meta, but we live in that kind of world now. Armstrong says on performing the songs with a man and woman rather than two men as The Brothers did it:
I got into the Everly Brothers’ record a couple years ago and I thought it was just beautiful. I was listening to it every morning for a while off and on. I thought it would be cool to remake the record because I thought it was sort of an obscure thing and more people should know about it, but I really wanted to do it with a woman singing because I thought it would take on a different meaning — maybe broaden the meaning a little bit…
If you’re a fan of country music (I’m not talking about pop country here) give this one a listen. The challenge to take old songs and keep the old country character intact without sounding just old fashioned is not an easy task. But the subject material of the old songs is surprisingly forthright:
When you really start exploring what the songs are about and — you know, they don’t really leave any room for guessing; there’s no riddles about these songs. They’re just straight-up songs about a kid dying from consumption and a guy killing his wife and throwing her in a river and a song about the loss of love and blah blah blah. So it just kind of gets down to the root of things.
Source: Stereogum
