Lydia Loveless – Bandwidth http://bandwidth.wamu.org WAMU 88.5's New Music Site Tue, 02 Oct 2018 15:23:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.2 Hear Lydia Loveless Cover Prince’s ‘I Would Die 4 U’ http://bandwidth.wamu.org/hear-lydia-loveless-cover-princes-i-would-die-4-u/ http://bandwidth.wamu.org/hear-lydia-loveless-cover-princes-i-would-die-4-u/#respond Wed, 11 Mar 2015 11:00:00 +0000 http://bandwidth.wamu.org/?p=48984 Last year, as an April Fools’ Day joke, the label Bloodshot Records announced that it had brought together 21 affiliated artists for a roughed-up roots take on the music of Prince, to be pressed as a “purple swirl colored double vinyl LP” set. To the label’s surprise, fans were, as Bloodshot puts it in a new announcement, “really pissed off.” So to make up for the offense on Record Store Day this year, Bloodshot will release a pair of actual Prince covers — Lydia Loveless covering “I Would Die 4 U” and Cory Branan doing “Under The Cherry Moon” — pressed onto actual purple vinyl.

Loveless’ cover, which you can hear on this page, trades the ecstatic swirl of Prince’s 1984 original for her own gale-force pleas of desperation. Where you could listen to Prince sing “I Would Die 4 U” and imagine a love that takes both partners to paradise, Loveless — true to her name — sounds like she’s throwing herself at the feet of a lover who might not even know she exists. Add her to the long and forever-growing list of musicians across genres, from Sinead O’Connor and Cyndi Lauper to TLC and Robyn, who have knelt at the altar of the purple one and walked away with their dignity intact.

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]]> http://bandwidth.wamu.org/hear-lydia-loveless-cover-princes-i-would-die-4-u/feed/ 0 Lydia Loveless: Tiny Desk Concert http://bandwidth.wamu.org/lydia-loveless-tiny-desk-concert/ http://bandwidth.wamu.org/lydia-loveless-tiny-desk-concert/#respond Tue, 01 Jul 2014 14:31:00 +0000 http://bandwidth.wamu.org/?p=35174 For 23-year-old singer-guitarist Lydia Loveless, gritty, countrified blues-rock is a palette broad enough to include literary drama — complete with fatalistic references to the doomed French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud — and a plainspoken plea for oral sex. In fact, “Head” and “Verlaine Shot Rimbaud” (both of which appear on this year’s terrific Somewhere Else) pop up back-to-back in this subdued but seething three-song Tiny Desk Concert, which Loveless recorded with the help of her full touring band.

Loveless follows “Head” and “Verlaine” with “Mile High,” an even newer single (released with a cover of Kesha’s “Blind” as a B-side) she’d just put out as a 7″ on Record Store Day. Taken together, the three songs — performed, as Loveless notes wryly, with very little audience eye contact — paint a smart, no-nonsense picture of a smart, no-nonsense talent.

Set List
  • “Head”
  • “Verlaine Shot Rimbaud”
  • “Mile High”
Credits

Producers: Denise DeBelius, Stephen Thompson; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Olivia Merrion; Production Assistant: Alex Schelldorf; photo by Alex Schelldorf/NPR

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