We No Who U R

It’s been a while since I’ve released a cover song. The last one was “Until It Sleeps” by Metallica, and that was released back in 2019.

To be honest with you, I have a love/hate relationship with playing covers. 

It's important to play covers because a) you pay homage to your favorite artists and their songs and b) learning covers teaches you new tricks and techniques in playing your instrument and in songwriting that you can later incorporate into your own songs. But still…I have a love/hate relationship with covers.

I had a long discussion with myself about the matter, and I’ve attributed the “hate” part to three main reasons.

Reason number 1: Very, very, very rarely does a cover outshine the original. Even covers recorded by my favorite artists fail in comparison to the original. I recall during COVID many artists started remotely jamming and recording covers, and I don’t recall myself liking a single cover more than the original. I think that there is just a certain X factor in every original song that can never be recaptured. Even if a band decides to revisit their own songs years later, the results almost always fall through. And if it’s a classic…woo, good luck with that!

Reason number 2: I am first and foremost a songwriter. I recall the first time I picked up a guitar, I wrote a two-note riff. While most people would pick up an instrument to learn their favorite songs, I learned guitar to write my own songs and express myself.

Learning something requires practice and perseverance. The more you practice and the more you spend time with anything, the better you become at it…but it can be done. However, songwriting is a gift. You either have it or you don’t.

Reason number 3: There is no novelty factor. When you listen to a song by your favorite artist for the first time, you’re eager to know what’s going to happen next as you listen to the song. Will there be a guitar solo? What will the drums do? What will the chorus sound like? With covers though, you’re kind of already familiar with the melody and the other elements of the song. 

So what happened? Why is there suddenly a new Greyfade cover?

For the last couple years, every six months or so I’d book around six to eight recording sessions. During those sessions, I’d record songs of Greyfade and songs of my alter ego, Faded Grey.

This time around I had another discussion with myself. I decided to spice things up a little bit and do something that I haven’t done in a while, and that’s recording a cover.

People that know me know by now that I absolutely love Nick Cave. I think the main reason for that is you never know what to expect from the guy (the “novelty factor”). Sometimes you get a crazy song like “Deanna.” Sometimes a tearjerker like “Into My Arms.” Sometimes an erotic love song like “Loverman.” Sometimes a weird as hell atmospheric record like Ghosteen. And everything in between. The musicianship of his piano playing together with all the members of the Bad Seeds (which is his band, past and present) is mind-blowing and his voice…wow it gets better with age, like fine wine.

I have covered “Red Right Hand” by him, and I love my version of it because, if you listen to the song, it’s quite different from the original. I believe that while recording it, me and my producer Hadi “Greyfaded” the song.

To be fully transparent, I prefer my cover of “Red Right Hand” over my cover of “Until It Sleeps.” The reason for that is, in the latter, we stayed very true to the original version and, as I mentioned earlier, very rarely does a cover outshine the original.

This time around, for “We No Who U R,” I wanted to “Greyfade” the original version of the song. I truly hope I was successful in achieving that.

“We No Who U R” is a very mystical song to me.  It was the first single from the “Push the Sky Away” album. I remember I was intrigued by the way the words were written in the song’s title. And when I heard it for the first time, it immediately got stuck in my head.

Yet I didn’t understand what the song meant the first time I heard it. Nick never explained what the song was about. Some people interpreted it as how technology nowadays is controlling us. I love vague songs because you can interpret them the way you like. To me, the song is about relinquishing your freedom. 

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ songwriting is phenomenal here. The melody, simplicity, and melancholy present are so beautiful.

I love the term “Songs I wish I wrote.” “We No Who U R” is one of them. Simple, check. Melancholic, check. Weird, check. Mystical, check. Catchy, check. Unique, check. It has all the elements that I love in a song. I hope that I have successfully “Greyfaded” it.