The Gloria Jones Challenge is our ongoing examination of the many, many, many covers of Jones’ classic Northern Soul jam “Tainted Love” – to see how they stack up compared to the original.
Today’s challenger is the blog-o-sphere favorite My Brightest Diamond. Let’s see how she does with the GJC.
First, as always – the original by Ms. Jones.
And now, the challenger.
Posctard ChaCha: The way this starts makes me feel like I’m in for some hard hitting club remix but in the end, it just sounds like some kind of lazy mash-up. It builds and builds, but never takes it all the way there. And when her restrained and shaky voice FINALLY reaches it’s full power, I’ve lost all interest. This was just the wrong song for the wrong singer. And now I feel like we’re on American Idol.
Postcard Editor: This is by far my favorite version from a challenger yet, but as the previous challengers were The Pussycat Dolls and Straight No Chaser I guess that’s not saying much. When the song started I was certain I wouldn’t dig it mostly due to the techno beat, but as the song continues it has a lot of charming things that bubble up to the surface. The over driven keys fuzzing out, the live drums do some nice counter rhythms in conjunction with the techno beat, some nice string flourishes. Also, unlike ChaCha I like the singers voice quite a bit. I could do without the backing vocal tracks which definitely push it a little too far into the pop music realm, but overall I dig it. I feel like it’s the first actual challenge we’ve had to the original. That being said – it still falls short.
Winner (and undefeated champion): Gloria Jones.
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