We all know how easy it can be to fall down a YouTube rabbit hole. You click on one epic cat fail video before auto-play kicks in, and 45 minutes later you’ve become an unwitting fan of Russian dashcam compilations. I had a similar, albeit much more positive, experience to that recently involving cover songs, and it was limited to one specific YouTube channel.
A little history: for more than a decade now, Australian national public radio broadcaster Triple J has been running a weekly feature called Like a Version, where contemporary artists visit the studio to perform both an original track and a cover of a song they love. In recent years, professionally produced video of these sessions has also been made available on Triple J’s YouTube channel, which has left a treasure trove of content to click through.
And, while there are plenty of gems in the catalog worth highlighting for this month’s Rocktographers Got Ya Covered, I’ve gotta go with a standout performance from back in December from Australian EDM artist Flume, who brought an entourage along in the form of Long Beach, CA rapper Vince Staples and a trio of talented female performers from down under: experimental electronic sorceress KUČKA, folk songstress Vera Blue, and Papua-New Guinea-born future soul singer Ngaiire. Together, they deliver a thoroughly modern reimagining of the iconic 90s hip hop club hit, “My Boo” by Ghost Town DJ’s, which had somewhat of a resurgence in popularity last year thanks to the viral Running Man Challenge. So sit back, relax and prepare to take a deep dive down the Like a Version rabbit hole.
For comparison’s sake, the original: