Every Little Thing He Does is Magic by Shawn Colvin

Yes, despite the name, Shawn Colvin is actually a woman. And she is responsible for this unforgiveable song, surely a contestant for the worst ever cover version. It's not unusual for singers to reverse the 'gender' of a song, such as 'A New England' by both Billy Bragg and then Kirsty McColl. But guess whose is better? It pains me slightly to include Shawn in this blog, because she's also responsible for 1997's 'Sunny Came Home' (a song about a woman setting fire to her house), which I bought as a single and actually really like. It also won a Grammy for Song of the Year. It was because I liked this song that I decided to investigate Shawn's albums; I borrowed a couple from the library, and I'm eternally grateful that I didn't spend money on buying them. Although she apparently started her musical career in a hard rock band, she eventually settled into that genre of whimsical, harmless, but fairly insignicant tune-smithery (known as 'the new folk movement', apparently.) She even sung backing vocals on Suzanne Vega's 'Luka' - I only mention this because my fiance likes singing it to me every so often, though I'm not entirely sure why. But I digress. 'Every Little Thing He Does is Magic' sticks out as a particularly awful crime in an otherwise mediocre back-catalogue. The original is one of those songs you either love or hate, but if you love it than you'll hate this. In fact if you hate it, you'll still hate this. Whatever you think of Sting, his voice was right for this song, and Shawn's isn't; she kind of dances around the melody, barely singing at some points. When the lyrics are sung by a man he sounds sensitive and adorable; when sung by a woman she sounds insipid and ditzy. Mind you, Sting didn't hold it against her because they later dueted on 'One Day She'll Love Me' - but then, these days, Sting will do anything if the money's right.

Crap lyrics: " Every little thing he does is magic/Everything he do just turns me on/Even though my life before was tragic/Now I know my love for him goes on" - okay, so they're virtually just Sting's lyrics, but now I think about it, they're a bit poor. Rhyming 'magic' with 'tragic' is worthy of a 14-year old penning their first song.

Verdict: The word 'pelagic' also rhymes with 'magic' (the fact that it refers to creatures who live in the ocean shouldn't be a hindrance.)


(Thanks to www.outmedia.org for the borrowed pic)

anything by George Benson

...Well, almost anything - 'On Broadway' is just about acceptable. I know it's cheating to not name an individual song, but the point I'm making in doing this is that all George Benson's songs sound the same and I actually couldn't name any of them aside from the aforementioned 'On Broadway.' I know the man is revered in his field as a master jazz/soul guitarist, and admired as a smooth R 'n' B tenor to boot, but there are only so many jazz noodlings a person can take. Lots of George's songs seem to begin quite sensibly, as straight forward soul and jazz-infused numbers, but it's not long before he lapses into self-indulgent, unpredictable guitar solos and then - God help us - scatting. There is no place in music for scat that I can think of. At this point, you know it's not going to be a radio-friendly 3-minute track, but is likely to last for about three times that, allowing you to do various minor household chores and still be back in time for the fade out.

Crap lyrics: "Give me that crack/Give me some of that crack/Give me that crack" (things are obviously not going too well on Broadway.)

Verdict: George should look at what happened to '90s chart blip, Scatman John, and be afraid...