Imagine Dragons on SNL with Kendrick Lamar and an orchestra performed Radioactive last night (2/1/14) and I guess it was a pretty cool performance although it smacked of over compensating. It felt a bit like the guy going through mid-life crisis buying the beefed up red Corvette. Don't get me wrong, Radioactive is a catchy pop rock song. I have been known to crank it up in my car and sing along but the SNL performance and the need to "go big" seems like a trend for a lot of artists. When they go on TV shows someone in the background apparently feels the song or artist cannot stand alone on their own two feet. Again, this performance was fine and maybe the decision to add the orchestration and Kendrick Lamar was merely based on the positive response to the Grammy's performance and creative license but to me (and this goes more to this concept than Imagine Dragons performance on SNL) "over the top" usually feels like slight of hand.
For me, give me a five piece Queens of the Stone Age sounding more bad ass than most (on Letterman). Give me Ty Segall's three piece side project FUZZ who kills it without the benefit of a string section (Live at Burgerama 2). OR give me My Goodness, all two of them, doing stripped down fully charge blues based rock and roll (Blackout Baby Live on Kexp).
-
Robb Donker
21422825 by YardieGoals
No comments:
Post a Comment