Baker’s Dozen #2: Head Over Heels

Greetings & Salutations!

Why “Head Over Heels”? Why us? Why now? Why is this post entitled “Baker’s Dozen” and why is it labeled as entry #2 when there has been no entry #1 as of yet?

The answer to the last question will have to wait for a few days, but Matt Meldrum explains everything else below. Read on…

This is an exciting time for us here at SoN World. This is the first time we’ve ever recorded and released a (non-Floyd) cover tune! Obviously Thom and I have deep roots in the prog rock world, with heavy influences from Floyd, Yes, Rush, Marillion, etc. So it makes perfect sense that our first ever cover recording would be……Tears for Fears???

Ok, it may not be blatantly obvious from our music, but Thom and I are both pretty big TFF fans. For my own part, I came across them when someone gave me the “Seeds of Love” album as an example of great engineering and production, which it certainly is. That acclaim also is shared with the “Songs from the Big Chair” album; in fact I think “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is one of the best pop arrangements and productions ever made.

So why in the world would I want to take on a song from a band with such great street cred for engineering, and one that is an established hit to boot? Well, I’ve listened to “Head Over Heels” many times and while love it as a song, I always wanted the studio version to be a little faster-paced and, for lack of a better word, bouncier. I kind of imagined more rock-oriented version, not unlike the Ataris cover of “Boys of Summer”. So we took to the task of speeding it up a bit and basically swapping all the guitar and keyboard lines to see how it felt. I think it turned out to be a fun rock tune both to play and to listen to.

My biggest challenge came in trying to reproduce decent lead vocals. Not sure I want to take on a song originally sung by Roland Orzabal (or Curt Smith for that matter) ever again. The sound of his voice is so unique that it is hard to compete with, and it turns out that the song itself is just plain hard to sing, especially when sped up. Hopefully the vocals get at least a passing grade, but the rest of the instrumentation turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would. I asked Tommy to give a little swing to the drums and I love the results. We of course had to top it off with background vocals from Marie Estrada to give it the extra spark that it needed.

I’m pleased with the result and hope others will have a fun time with it too. So, with that, happy Valentine’s Day from Sons of Nothing.

See, we can do kind of lovey-dovey songs on occasion. We just have to rely on someone else to write them.

-MM