The interwebs have certainly been sprinkled with its fair share of less than flattering reactions to George Michael's drastic reworking of New Order's "True Faith", a single which was released this week in the UK for the Comic Relief charity.The dreamy production features a heavily affected vocal and even dares to remove some of the original lyrics. Treating GMs vocal with a vocoder effect allowed for some interesting harmonics that would not have been able to be created naturally. At least that's how George explained and defended his use of it. Let's keep in mind that he hardly needs autotune. George is quite capable of staying in pitch.
So, it's clearly an artistic statement of some sort. At least he has continued be top of mind with something related directly to his career. It's a nice change of pace from him being slumped over the steering wheel of his car. Regardless of your thoughts on the merits of the single, it's all for a good cause with all the proceeds being donated to the Comic Relief charity.
Now, just days after the release of "True Faith", George revealed the video for it. Let's have a look.
Well! I heard George likes a good smoke! Oh, such delicious irony.
I like how the clip develops into a bit of a tribute to the original, Philippe Decouflé produced video from New Order. I'm especially fond of George's new found desire to look directly at the camera. Nice to see him ditch the sunglasses. Let's hope he continues the trend.
I didn't have the immediate negative reaction to the track that many of my compadres had, and I have found as I listen to the track more, I do enjoy it. The video really helped drive it home for me, and now I am excited for this dance music album he's started talking about.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree, not a negative reaction. The vocoder (such an ancient term these days)/autotune left me a bit cold at first, but maybe George's point wasn't to shine larger than the song, as much to be a part of it...I would be VERY interested to hear this live, no autotune, with a ambient/funk live mix.
ReplyDeletei thought the video was very cool how he put smoked versions of the dancers to pay homage to the original video
ReplyDeleteonly thing i did not like the the audio tuning everybody is using it nowadays GM has a great voice but he muddles it with audio tuning making it sound like Kanye West version
just my bit
As much as I love George (and the original song), I truly hate this version. Makes me sad. :(
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