Both Alicia Keys and singer-songwriter Ryan Tedder of the band OneRepublic have faced accusations that, well, if their songs were toilet paper, they could be labeled as containing at least 35% post-consumer recycled materials. This spring, Kelly Clarkson called Tedder out on the more-than-passing-resemblance between her 2009 hit single “Already Gone” and “Halo” by Beyonce, both Tedder originals. Meanwhile, our good friend Money Mike has noted here and elsewhere the Force MD’s impression Keys pulls off on “That’s How Strong My Love Is”, a highlight of her latest (and best yet) record The Element of Freedom. But in the case of a couple of recent singles, it seems that Tedder and Keys have independently arrived at roughly the same song, roughly simultaneously. Though Keys’s song was released and charted modestly as a single last year while OneRepublic’s is only just now starting to scale European charts and isn’t yet receiving any U.S. airplay, the albums the songs are taken from appeared within weeks of each other last fall. Neither artist could fairly accuse the other of even accidental plagiarism. Both are great songs, but it’s hard for me, when I’m singing along with one, not to sing the words and melodies of the other over it. I’d love to hear Alicia Keys co-fronting OneRepublic with Ryan Tedder on a mash-up of these songs.
This is a song Glenn Beck stole from Sam Adams. Titus Andronicus is stealing it back. It’s a seven minute indie-rock epic, named for a clause from the Preamble to the Constitution. It opens with an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address. It ends with a quote from prominent 19th Century abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Along the way, it (literally) shouts out punk rock transliterations of Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg (a folk singer who, unlike most recently polled Americans, can speak with some authority on what is and what is not socialism), and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, all while sounding like Bright Eyes singer Conor Oberst trying his damnedest to front a volume-uncompromised Thin Lizzy, circa ’76 (Seventeen-76, that is.). I had no idea what I was watching when I, half-sleeping, caught my first glimpse – the last thirty seconds or so – of the video for this song on TV a couple months ago, but it kept me awake that night, the same way watching Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds did.
“A More Perfect Union” is the lead single from the New Jersey quintet’s sophomore album The Monitor, and it comes on with the sort of triumphal mob rage that Lincoln’s Lyceum Address presciently decried and warned against – the 28-year-old Lincoln believing more than anything that the Union’s demise would come not at the hands of some foreign conqueror (or al-Qaida), but by the pitchforks and nooses of its own rioting hordes (Fox News?) – the same triumphal mob rage that seems to fuel the current Tea Party movement, blindly and nonspecifically angry, fairly puking on its own broad hubris, wrapping itself up in the spirit of the American Revolution, creating itself in the time-and-history-and-politics-distorted image of the Founders. It’s a punk rock opera built out of slogans – “Rally around the flag!” – and proud nationalistic proclamations – “Will I not yell like hell for the glory of the Newark Bears!”. In couplets that Woody Guthrie could sue over, they sing (?) the praises of “brutal Somerville summers” and “cruel New England winters”; of interstate highways, the Garden State Parkway, and the lights over Fenway. You could imagine Sarah Palin as a compulsively literate New Jersey loyalist (I think I just discovered the formula for Sarah Palin anti-matter!); or maybe Springsteen as a fervent, third generation punk rocker on the campaign trail for Van Buren ‘48. Either way, this song is wicked awesome.
Sadly, the video edits the song down to a more manageable length, but it’s well worth hearing in all its unruly 7 minute glory. Listen here:
Hey! Remember this show? Remember the band who won it? Maybe not. It was three years ago, after all, and unlike the American Idol which all but guarantees an annual outlet for its past winners and finalists to remind their fickle-by-design audience that they still exist, the Next Great American Band has not since returned to the airwaves. (I’m actually still holding out hope for Season 2 of Bands on the Run! Flickerstick Rulz!!!)
Moreover, where Idol winners often have an album assembled and rushed out to the market in time for Christmas shopping, Next Great American Band winners The Clark Brothers seemed to drop off the face of the earth, leaving the few of us who watched the show and fell in love -err mild infatuation with the Appalachian trio’s thrilling (for prime time) acoustic conflagrations of bluegrass, pop, and classic rock to wonder, y’know, wha’happen?
The Clark Brothers “Gimme Shelter”
Sometime between then and now, the Clark Brothers – Adam, Ashley, and Austin – were signed to a major label, and then got dropped by the label in a bit of corporate re-shuffling. At which point, they changed their name to Sons of Sylvia, signed with 19 Entertainment and Interscope, and showed up on a duet with Carrie Underwood called “What Can I Say”. Now, the band is on tour with Underwood in support of their long delayed debut album Revelation.
Carrie Underwood with Sons of Sylvia “What Can I Say”
Though the Sons of Sylvia had previously, along with three more of their brothers, recorded and even charted a Top 20 Country hit 10 years ago as the Clark Family Experience; and though the instruments they play (fiddle, mandolin, slide guitar) look and sound a little, y’know, bluegrassy; and though they are touring with Carrie Underwood, it becomes clear listening to Revelation that Sons of Sylvia are no more a country music band at this point than OneRepublic, whose lead singer-songwriter (and one of 19 Entertainment’s favorite go-to hit-writers) Ryan Tedder co-wrote and produced the group’s debut single “Love Left to Lose”. As with many of Tedder’s other hits, the song boasts a big, open-air sound with a full-throated campfire folk sing-along of a chorus, making it an immediate winner when you hear it on the radio.
The band carries that bigness with them throughout Revelation, almost to the point where it becomes a little too much of a pretty good thing, both in the record’s anthemic sound, but also in lyrics (see the title track) that seem to be reaching for the spiritual profundity of Bono, circa 1984. The album opens with “John Wayne”, a gorgeous statement of devotion that gets oversold by Ashley’s trying-too-hard shouty high vocals on the chorus, and ends with a strange assemblage of sounds (is there a song in this?) called “The War Within”.
There’s no question these guys are talented, and that they’re passionate music-makers. But the fire and brimstone they brought to that cover of “Gimme Shelter” on TV a couple years ago seems to have been compromised in the band’s quest to come up with a great pop/rock record. I’m not one of those people who believes that the words “greatness” and “pop/rock” are mutually exclusive; I think what Sons of Sylvia have attempted with Revelation is admirable, promising, and totally listenable. (I mean, seriously: pop music with actual stringed instruments, people! How awesome is that in 2010?) But listening to Revelation is like watching someone trying to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, generating occasionally thrilling puffs of smoke, but never quite acheiving something we might be able roast marshmallows over.
