David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s star-studded collaborative concept album about the life of Imelda Marcos may sound strange, but it’s no less stunning for it.
Featuring a staggering list of guest vocalists that includes Santigold, Tori Amos, Nellie McKay, Florence Welch, St. Vincent, Cyndi Lauper, Róisín Murphy, Sia, and Sharon Jones, the double-disc set plays like a stage show minus the stage, telling the story of the former Filipino first lady’s rise and fall — often through lyrics based on her own words.
With most of the music world’s eyes trained on the live performances at the South by Southwest Festival this week, you might think that it would have been difficult to come up with a handful of cool, new videos for you to check out. Not so, which is great news for those of us who didn’t make it to Austin (cough, cough). After the jump, check out the latest offerings from Devendra Banhart, Hot Chip, Lykke Li, Gus Gus, and that crazy Fat Boy Slim/David Byrne collaboration project that’s all about Imelda Marcos.
When OK Go dropped their new video for “This Too Shall Pass,” the Internet became abuzz — and rightfully so, as the clip is near-genius. (Go behind-the-scenes courtesy of Fast Company.) The band spent three months building what is essentially a giant, musical game of Mouse Trap, with the help of friends from NASA and Jet Propulsion Labs.
This isn’t the first time the band has grabbed our attention with a music video, as the infamous treadmill choreography of “Here It Goes Again” is also, admittedly, kind of brilliant. Unfortunately, OK Go have never quite caught up to the level of their visual aesthetic on the musical end of things. Of course, they’re not the only act that has been outshined by its own videos. The following clips exemplify just what happens when an unexceptional song gets trumped by an exceptional visual counterpart.
Not long ago we told you about Here Lies Love, a rather unconventional concept album about Imelda Marcos due out later next month from David Byrne and Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim). Now Stereogum has posted the first track, “Please Don’t,” which features vocals from Santigold. “I think Santi did a perfect version of this song, which describes, pretty much in her own words, Imelda Marcos’ adventures in what she called ‘handbag diplomacy,’” Byrne has said. Other contributors include Tori Amos, Róisín Murphy, Alice Russell, Martha Wainwright, Florence Welch, and Sharon Jones. Learn more about the project here.
Talking Heads alum David Byrne and dance beat guru Fatboy Slim are finally releasing Here Lies Love, their disco-influenced concept album based on the life of ex-Philippine first lady/shoe-hoarding diva Imelda Marcos and her life-long servant, Estrella Cumpas. If your first reaction is to rub your eyeballs and re-read that last sentence, we felt the same way.
Though, after some thought, we realized that this is just what we’ve come to expect from the awesomely eccentric Byrne. The new-wave hero played a rough draft of the project in a New York City showcase at Carnegie Hall in 2007, receiving decent reviews (it was a rough draft, after all). The original goal was to stage the songs as a musical, and while there have been a couple of theatrical performances with a few different ladies at the helm, the official album release features vocals by 23 artists.
