Aloe Blacc Gives Us The Bruno Marsified Version Of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”
On Friday, the pop-soul singer Aloe Blacc will release his new EP Rock My Soul. That’s the one where he reinterprets ’90s alt-rock hits through his own style, and it feels at least a little like an elaborate troll-job on anyone who’s old enough to remember hearing those songs on the radio when they were new. We’ve already posted his versions of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” and Nirvana’s “Lithium,” and now he’s also taken on No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.”
This one is a little different from the previous covers, since “Don’t Speak” was really always a pop song. No Doubt vaguely fit under the alt-rock label since they’d been a ska band and since they kicked off the Tragic Kingdom album cycle with “Just A Girl,” but the big ballad “Don’t Speak” was inescapable across radio formats, and nobody’s going to act like it’s sacrilege when someone puts complicated horn-charts on that song. It remains a little weird to hear someone translating it into an ultra-smooth Bruno Mars, song, though. This guy just doesn’t sound like he hurts. Listen to the Aloe Blacc cover and the No Doubt original below.
Rock My Soul is out 6/7.