Pickle Darling, Beabadoobee Share Aimee Mann Magnolia Covers
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Two young artists have separately posted covers of Aimee Mann songs from Magnolia recently. A couple weeks back, Beabadoobee out of the UK shared a solo acoustic version of “Save Me” via Instagram, captioned with a rationale “because I love her.” Now New Zealand indie-pop artist Pickle Darling aka Lukas Mayo has released his take on “Deathly,” which also appears on Mann’s Bachelor No. 2 Or, The Last Remains Of The Dodo. Mayo, who also recently covered the Postal Service with fellow Kiwis the Beths, also shared this statement:
Honestly I am quite new to Aimee Mann’s albums, she’s one of those artists that’s been recommended to me for years. I went through a short phase of listening to anything that had Jon Brion on the credits and then found this album for like $5 at work, threw it on the CD player, and became obsessed with it. Doing covers is often my way of exploring how a certain songwriter operates, and a way to start diving into someone’s discography. I never really do covers of artists I’m too familiar with, because their music is already kind of in my DNA. But when I’m a new convert of an artist, I get excited about the new set of songwriting tricks available to me. I still feel like a songwriting student and the best way to learn is by covering a song and rearranging it, seeing what you can strip away and what is essential to the composition. There were a bunch of songs on this album I was choosing between, it was a close one between this and “How Am I Different,” but I just loved how immediately warm the melody was for this one. I’ve been trying to write songs like this for years.
Hear both covers below. Incidentally, Beabadoobee has a new live album called Live In LA out today, so you can stream that too.