Pitchfork

Sometimes an independent artist can take a wrongly reviled chart-pop song and, through a deeply sincere reading, remove it from the gaudy trappings of Top 40 success to reveal a surprisingly well-crafted song beneath. Take Bonnie "Prince" Billy's blessedly reverent take on R. Kelly's "The World's Greatest", from yesterday's well-reviewed Ask Forgiveness mini-LP. Following some highly persuasive reader e-mail, that track turned out to be the final straw in getting me to toss aside my previous dismissal of the Kelly song. Even the recent Guilt by Association compilation was full of artists covering songs they actually liked, despite the wrong-headed idea that people should be ashamed of digging Kelly, Fall Out Boy, or Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'". By contrast, what's the point in covering a song you think sucks to begin with? Don't our favorite bands have anything better to do?

Apparently not. "Auto-tuned and trite" is how Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste, writing on the band's blog, describes "Too Little Too Late", a lightweight 2006 pop hit for 16-year-old singer JoJo. Droste's bandmate Daniel Rossen has covered the tune, penned by "Like a Virgin" co-writer Billy Steinberg along with Josh Alexander and Ruth-Anne Cunningham. Rossen throws out the original's David Gray-style acoustic-pop-with-beats backing and JoJo's would-be Mariah Carey r&b singing in favor of moody acoustic guitars, cavernous percussion, jazzy piano, and multi-layered vocals. When Rossen gets to the admittedly catchy hook, he could be singing an Elliott Smith lament instead of a sophomoric little ditty about one of the most fertile subjects for pop songs, first love. He does this "as if he really meant all those lyrics (which, if you know the song, is really hilarious)," Droste writes.

So basically, Rossen has turned an over-produced, forgettable pop song for the Radio Disney crowd into an immaculately produced, still pretty much forgettable pop song for the indie-rock crowd. Except this time, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Yes, Grizzly Bear are responsible for one of the year's most surreptitiously awesome discs, the Friend EP, but friends don't let friends record pointless ironic covers.

Note: There's been some talk about this track in the Pitchfork office, and-- oh no!-- a little disagreement. Some of us are digging what he did here and don't hear it as tongue-in-cheek. So, there we have it-- see what you think.

Another note(!): We received this e-mail from Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste, with a bit more info about how this track came to be:

"It was a birthday gift to me. I forced him to do it. I really like the song, can't I like auto-tuned and trite songs sometimes too? Hahaha. My friend introduced me to her ages ago b/c she worked on the videos...and, well, I thought it was catchy and wanted to see if Dan could turn something he didn't like and had zero relationship with into something great, and gosh darned he did a pretty good job."

MP3/Stream:> Daniel Rossen: "Too Little Too Late"
[original track from The High Road; out now on Blackground/Universal]