Watch Franz Ferdinand Cover Drake’s “Passionfruit”
It’s fun to watch new pop singles become modern standards. It happened a few years ago with Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” and again with Lana Del Rey’s “Love” — over and over again, when given a chance to cover someone else’s material, artists chose those.
Another one that keeps popping up is “Passionfruit,” the languid and low-key highlight from Drake’s 2017 “playlist” More Life. The track matched “Fake Love” as the project’s best-charting single, peaking at #8 on Billboard’s Hot 100. But what’s been most indicative of its influence and appeal is all the artists who’ve opted to cover it, a list that includes Paramore, John Mayer, Yaeji, and Mura Masa.
Today we can add Franz Ferdinand to that roster. The Scottish rockers are making the rounds in support of their recent Always Ascending — just this morning they released a video for “Glimpse Of Love” — and over the weekend those rounds brought them to The Strombo Show, the Canadian radio program hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos. Live from the House Of Strombo, they performed a six-song set including new tunes, their own classic “Take Me Out,” and — yup — “Passionfruit,” which pops up at the 11:40 mark in the video archive of the gig. Take it all in below.
Always Ascending is out now on Domino.