Currently placed at No. 4 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart is a song titled “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye and featuring Kimbra . The first time I heard this song my dad was playing it in his car on the ride back from a Springsteen concert. This was a couple weeks before I heard the song on the radio. Admittedly, I was not really into the song at first. But, by the time it ended, I was hooked.
After hearing it on the radio about two weeks ago, I did a quick search on YouTube to see if the song had a music video. Being a music video junkie, I was excited when my search proved fruitful. As I waited a painfully long time for the video to buffer, my excitement grew.
If anyone has seen the music video, you already know what I saw next. There was Gotye’s naked leg then his naked hip followed by his naked chest. Nothing inappropriate was shown but, being a bit of a sheltered girl, I was taken aback.
However, the more I watched the video, the more I liked it. I was fascinated by the way Gotye and Kimbra were painted into the background. More so, I loved the intensity of the video. The song itself is packed full of emotion you can see on Gotye’s face. You can feel the emotions pouring off him as he takes a deep breath. It’s captivating.
After I had watched the video a few times, I posted it on Facebook. A few hours later, my aunt commented on it. She said she liked the “walk off the earth video better.” I assumed that she was referring to another video Gotye had made for the song in which he was walking off the earth. So, of course I did another YouTube search.
The video I found was not another version of the music video. It wasn’t even Gotye . It was a cover of “Somebody That I Used to Know” by a band called Walk Off the Earth. Their fame comes mainly from covering other artists’ songs. In their cover of Gotye’s recent hit, all five members of the band are playing on one guitar. It’s pretty incredible because all the instruments heard in the original are produced on one guitar.
However, instead of having one male singer, Walk Off the Earth has one male member who sings the lower verses and one male member who sings the higher chorus. Their one female band member sings Kimbra’s part.
Comments on the video and from friends of mine on Facebook flaunt Walk Off the Earth’s version of “Somebody That I Used to Know” as being the better version of the song. I do not agree. While their instrumental skills are clearly one of the most awesome things I’ve seen in a long time, their singing is lacking.
It is not as though the members in Walk Off the Earth who sing are poor singers; they simply lack the emotional intensity found in Gotye’s version. I firmly believe the reason why songs like “Somebody That I Used to Know,” Adele’s “Somebody Like You,” or “Fix You” by Coldplay are so widely popular is because they are emotionally charged songs. We, as listeners, can tell when the artists cares about what their singing. It makes us feel the same thing. An emotional artist can make an okay song a #1 hit.
I am not discrediting the skills of Walk Off the Earth because they are very talented. But, it would be foolish to say their version of “Somebody That I Used to Know” is better than Gotye’s .
There is a reason cover bands are rarely more famous than the bands their covering: They lack the emotion that accompanies the song when sung by its original creator. And, there’s a reason why Gotye’s version, not Walk Off the Earth’s version, is No. 4 in the country.
