What is it about the acoustic guitar that makes a song sound so different, and really if we’re being honest, so much better? When I was thirteen, I really got into music. I started to expand my tastes from the building blocks my parents and my childhood had given me (The Beatles, The Carpenters and boy bands) and found great bands that I still listen to today (Brand New, Something Corporate, Taking Back Sunday). As I got a bit older, and a bit more hormonal and angry (yes, I was a very angry 14/15-year-old), my music turned a bit heavier (Thursday, Senses Fail, The Used — can you tell I was a teenager in the 2000s?). While I was in my angry music stage, I found that I connected more to the acoustic tracks, and that’s when my love affair with Dashboard Confessional began. Although I still liked some of the bands I discovered in those years, I also found that I was a bigger fan of anything that came unplugged.
To this day I am still a huge fan of acoustic tracks, or as Jesse Lacey would say, “a sucker for anything acoustic”. Yesterday while I was cleaning, I was listening to a mixture of oldies, upbeat indie and rap — my perfect cleaning music combination. Once I finished, I sat down at my computer, and while trying to find something new to listen to on Spotify, I rediscovered my of my favourite playlists — Acoustic Covers.
From covers of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” to Men Without Hats’ “The Safety Dance” to Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off”, my heart-felt at home. I don’t know what it is, but something about a song played with an acoustic guitar, especially if that’s not the way it was originally intended, just speaks to me. I always assumed that I was not alone in this, but found out sadly that I am alone — at least in our household. When Christopher came home from work and we were eating dinner, I had the playlist playing in the background and as soon as he recognized a song (Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite”) he could get over how it just didn’t sound right. For some reason I think it sounds even better.
Besides the fact that the acoustic guitar speaks a language that my heart understands, I think I love these acoustic covers so much because it slows it down and strips away all the flash so that you’re left with the art and poetry of the lyrics. Hearing an acoustic version has changed the way I think of some songs, like The Proclaimer’s “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”. If you have not heard Sleeping at Last’s amazing cover, you need to listen to it right this minute.
Do you like acoustic covers? Are you a sucker for anything acoustic?
{ps. Graphic made with Word Swag app.}
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