The Beatles songs are strong and amazing, no matter who sings them or how they sing them. The fact that three Anthology Sets of unreleased music sold millions of copies. Followed by Let It Be Naked selling millions of copies. And then Love, music to watch Cirque Du Soleil by, sold millions of copies should prove that there is still a market for this stuff. But all of those were, in fact, The Beatles. Across the Universe is not the Beatles, not even close, but the music is still powerful and good.
I have always had this fantasy of recording an album in which I did several versions of one Beatles song-I’ve Just Seen a Face. This song lends itself to all types of music, from country to punk and beyond. The version on Across The Universe has a slight country twang to it, and it works just fine.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, a song that always thought to refer to LSD tripping, is rendered here with a nice tripy feel. The songs are best when played loud. There is something of returning to teenagehood about this music, at least for me.
I Want to Hold Your Hand is sung by a female lead voice and she still wants to be his man. It’s a nice version, good beat, soild production values.
Most people think of the Beatles as drugged out hippies, and the selection of songs here follow that general belief, as they are strong on the psychedelic side and weak on the ballad side. But that’s ok, it’s called Across the Universe, not Love Me Do.
The title track is ok, but it is not my favorite off the CD. Maybe I just have this feeling, that everyone who is of certain age has, that if the Beatles aren’t doing it, I should be doing it.
Many of the songs are spoken rather than sung, which oddly, is how I often sing them myself. This is not one of those cases of Hey, I invented that but I never got around to doing anything with it. It’s just simple jealousy. I wish I could sing like that and do a cover of my favorite Beatles songs.
There is a strong undertone of sorrow to most of the songs, or maybe that is just me. The fact that there will never be any more Beatles songs has been a major bummer since like 1970 man. So hearing how amazingly good these songs sound, even when mangled as they are on a couple of the tracks, makes you wish you lived in an alternate universe where the Beatles were the Rolling Stones and the Stones had broken up and gone their separate ways. Of course, then there would be all this what if about the Rolling Stones. Or maybe not. The Beatles are better than the Stones, they said so on Saturday Night Live.
This is a good CD, but you might want to give LOVE a listen as well.
