Finding the Rhythm

Yes, this is another post about cover songs, I’ll forewarn you. 

Back in 1986, the late Jermaine Stewart released his second hit and what would ultimately become his most recognizable song: We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off. With a nice groove and some lyrical innuendo, it was no doubt ripe for a dance cover treatment (and I vaguely recall it was already done at one point).

I’ve seen it happen a few times before, but once again, we’re presented with a pair of dance covers of the same song that appear on the landscape at roughly the same time. Released under the full title, anonymous producers Chocolate Party have one version, a true cover, and released under the shortened Clothes Off, Miami Starfish give us a remake with Stewart’s own vocals (somewhat creepily to me) used posthumously.

Chocolate Party have so far defied all my efforts to find out more about who they are. As I blogged just last week, all the secrecy boggles my mind. I’m wagering they’re from the UK (empirically, it seems UK producers are the most famous for this “pick a name for each release” nonsense), and I’m further wagering I’ll never find out because they’re more interested in the keyword cashout than lasting recognition, charting, or anything else.

Miami Starfish is Boston’s Billy Mead, one half of Avalon Superstar, who have released a pair of great tracks. Considering that the Avalon Superstar MySpace page has been taken over and reconstituted as Miami Starfish, I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps Mead had a falling-out with his Avalon Superstar partner, Simon Langford.

In any case, while the Miami Starfish version of the song uses the original vocal, I frankly liked Chocolate Party’s treatment of the song over theirs.

Regardless, I suspect like most DJs, program directors, etc., I only have room for one of each song. Multiple mixes? Maybe. Multiple artists doing the same song? Not so much.

All the other arguments for or against dance covers aside, this scenario is clearly one of the risks of doing covers at all.