Wash away the rain

This week I will be comparing  "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden and the cover done by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.

 

Musicality

Soundgarden is more of a grunge band so their version sounds a bit more gritty and angry. They have guitars and drums to emphasize their points within the song.Whereas Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme are a jazz group so they have more of a calm and soothing tone. Their song mainly features a piano which makes it much less gritty and much more soothing. Since Lawrence and Gorme sing it more so as a duet, the song seems more like a love song or a happy song rather than a sad or angry song. Which really changes the whole tone of the song and the meaning of the lyrics seem more irrelevant in their version than in the original version.

 

Music Video

Though the song isn't really about anything particular, the music video by Soundgarden seems to depict the apocalypse.The music video shows a bunch of people in a neighborhood with over exaggerated features and grotesque, fake smiles plastered on their faces. The stanza that stands out the most is: "Black hole sun/ Won't you come/ And wash away the rain?/ Black hole sun/ Won't you come?/ Won't you come?"  In the middle of the video a tornado comes out of nowhere and sucks all of the people up into the sky like a vortex or a black hole at which point everything erupts into chaos, the music and the guitar seems to blare out. Which I believe is supposed to show the apocalypse sweeping everyone in the neighborhood because they are all bad. They all only seem to care about superficial things that they themselves become artificial caricatures. It shows a lady putting on lipstick to look pretty while staring at a buff guy exercising to look good. It also later shows a woman sunbathing to get a nice tan as well as a bunch of cruel kids trying to kill a harmless bug. The whole music video is strange and one of the strangest parts is a little girl eating vanilla ice cream and at about 2:40 in the video she seems to be regurgitating the ice cream back up right at the part in the lyric where they say "Won't you come" which is very suggestive.

Lyrics 

In the beginning of the song another lyric stood out to me "Boiling heat/ Summer stench/ 'Neath the black/ The sky looks dead." Which makes it sound like the neighborhood depicted in the music video is already living in a depressing world. The last lyric "The sky looks dead" seems to foreshadow the fact that world is coming to an end. There's a "boiling heat" except that there is no sun which is why the song keeps saying "Black hole sun/ Won't you come." How could there be any heat without any sun? The sky is black and I'm assuming it's raining because of the lyric "And wash away the rain." Even though in the music video there is no rain, but as I mentioned earlier a tornado comes and starts to sweep the people in the neighborhood up into the sky like the rapture.

The lyrics that best exemplify the idea that the song is about an apocalypse is: "Stuttering/ Cold and damp/ Steal the warm wind/ Tired friend/ Times are gone/ For honest men." Going back to the music video, none of the people in the neighborhood seem like good people. They all look evil and therefore they are characterized as dishonest and egotistical. The song goes on to say "In my shoes/ A walking sleep/ And my youth/ I pray to keep/ Heaven send/ Hell away/ No one sings/ Like you/ Anymore." The lyrics seem to say that the singer wants to stay young and go to Heaven and not Hell, but all of the people in the music video seem to be lifted up into the sky which is the place we associate with Heaven. Except that none of the people are what most people would consider good enough to be sent to Heaven.

Lawrence and Eydie didn't change their lyrics only the sound of the song from gritty to jazzy.  The song starts off with Lawrence singing and then Eydie joins in right at the chorus when they start singing the stanza I listed earlier "Black hole sun/Won't you come/  And wash away the rain?/ Black hole sun/ Won't you come? / Won't you come?" Turning it more so into a duet and downplaying the intensity of the original song and the creepiness of the music video by Soundgarden. There also doesn't really seem to be any emphasis on the concepts of Heaven and Hell or any apocalypse in their version. It sounds more like a love song or a lullaby of some sort. Since it is more of a duet, it seems they are singing more so to each other like a type of serenade rather than singing to the audience.

Overall I prefer the original because I am more familiar with it despite the crazy music video. I am not a big jazz fan, however Lawrence and Eydie's version is still just as good as the original by Soundgarden. A lot of covers don't do music videos which I find a little frustrating, because the music video usually gives more of a sense to what the singer or songwriter was trying to say about the song in general. If they had done a music video it would give a better sense as to what Lawrence and Eydie were trying to say about their version.