Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 05/16/2012 at 12:36 PM Videos

The Popdust Files: covers, fun, gotye, hayley williams, somebody that i used to know

You wouldn’t normally say fun. and Gotye have much in common. One’s a stylish American Gleemo group whose big hit sounds like a double A-side single to Kanye West’s sampling “Popular” from Wicked. One’s an introspective Australian singer-songwriter whose big hit sounds like Phil Collins. Yet they’re going to be discussed in tandem for the next couple years, thanks to Billboard’s chart changes helping the two alt-pop tracks top the charts one after the other. When you think back to the beginning of 2012, it’s going to sound a lot like these two.

Having them cover each other, like fun. did during BBC Radio 1′s Live Lounge session with help from Hayley Williams (not actually present in person), then, is the exact sort of gimmickry that’s inevitable. And it makes a lot of sense that fun. did it first–Gotye’s game for genre-hopping but less so for sudden fame, and the fun. album is so all over the place anyway that a Gotye cover would fit right in, because anything would. It’s rather inventive for this sort of thing–sure, most of it is your standard acoustic cover, but the way fun. turns the beginning into piano and guitar shudders might actually be more tense than the original. As for Hayley, she’s already proven she’s got venom with, oh, every other Paramore single; she makes a fantastic Kimbra. Could we possibly get Gotye to reconsider the whole ambivalence-toward-fame thing, just for one song? His take on “Some Nights” kind of needs to be heard.