Tag: Björk

  • Björk – Crying

    For many posts I rely on the site whosampled.com as a reliable source, but I also give back to the site to help improve it. Recently, three entries I made (all Björk-related I might add) got approved and I want to talk about one of them.

    You may have noticed I take the definition of sampling quite broad, from literally using a fragment of a recording to taking a small ‘idea’ from a song and making it your own. In 2000 the Queens of the Stone Age did just that. When they released the song Better Living Through Chemistry, there’s one part of it that may seem familiar.

    Although most of the song is an original work, the lyric “There’s no one here, and people every where, you’re on your own” that serves as a chorus in the song, comes directly from a track of Björk’s album Debut from 1993; the song Crying. In that song it isn’t the chorus, but it leads up to it.  The Queens of the Stone age creatively re-engineered it into a completely different song and put it to good use.

  • Ray Brown Orchestra – Go down dying

    An interesting story surrounds the soundtrack of the otherwise rightfully forgotten film The Adventurers (1970). The music for the soundtrack is by Antonio Carlos Jobim and is arranged and conducted by Eumir Deodato (remember this name!).  In the same year famous producer/composer  Quincy Jones decided to re-score the whole thing and produced his own funked up version of the album. It was recorded by  the Ray Brown Orchestra, featuring Tom Scott and … Eumir Deodato. On that album is the the track Go Down Dying, which you can hear in the YouTube clip below. You’ll instantly recognise the intro as the main theme from Björk’s 1993 track Human Behaviour. Even though apparently there was some initial fuss about the usage of the sample, things seem to have been straightened out fine. Cause guess who ended up remixing the Björk song Isobel from her next album and did most of the orchestral arrangements for the album she did after that; Homogenic ? Yep: Eumir Deodato. Coincidentally the songs Human Behaviour, Isobel and Bachelorette (from Homogenic) are part of a trilogy of songs spanned over three albums. In a way Eumir Deodato has contributed to all three songs.

    Enjoy the original Go Down Dying: