Month: August 2016

Portishead’s SOS

In today’s “The cover is better that the original”, we chose Portishead’s SOS. The original song is by ABBA. Why it’s better: We all know that the Swedish group is an iconic pop phenomenon with a lot of catchy and emotional pop songs. ABBA has a definite style that you can recognize in any of their songs, the soft vocals and 70s vibe. Portishead’s cover strips down the lyrics and applies their own signature of “alternative rock.” The video for the song came out as a response to Labor Party Member of Parliament Jo Cox’s assassination. She was a young politician that advocated for immigrants in the U.K. among other issues. The political message, Beth Gibbons’ vocals, the band’s arrangement and the powerfully simple video transform a catchy tune into a haunting and beautiful plea for unity. The video ends with this poignant quote from one of Jo Cox’s speeches.

When She Writes

I’m an avid reader but it was only when someone asked me which female authors were my favorites, I realized that I couldn’t even name five. There’s a difference when you are a woman and you read something written by a woman rather than a man, especially a memoir. The four books that I mention here are about the different life experiences of four women. However, the most notorious thing they have in common, other than being female, is that they are makers. “Furiously Happy” by Jenny Lawson could be sum up by the rest of its title: ‘A funny book about horrible things.’ The book starts with the usual “advance praise” quotes from Dickens, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky and Ms. Lawson’s shrink, you’ll know it’s not the usual memoir right from the start. In these stories, Ms. Lawson describes her day-to-day struggles with mental illness. She also discusses her love for taxidermied animals and how sometimes they like to ride her cat. She shares laugh out loud stories about her depression, anxiety, self-harm, her shrinks, her …