Tori Amos and The Buggles’ Trevor Horn have teamed up for a cover of Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 single, “Swimming Pools (Drank),” reimagining it as a moody, modern piano ballad.
Amos and Horn’s take on the song arrives as the opening track on Horn’s new covers album, Echoes: Ancient & Modern. Built around a subdued piano and colored with silky strings, Amos’ multi-layered vocals lead the tune, placing Lamar’s lyricism in a new context. In the liner notes for the new album, Horn explained: “I thought of it as a kind of literate, modern American standard, a rap song open to reinterpretation. I wanted something distinctly 21st-century with original, eloquent lyrics, and my longtime engineer Tim Weidner suggested this.”
Continuing, Horn praised Amos’ creative contributions. “Tori Amos took the idea of adapting Kendrick Lamar’s psyched-up swagger in her stride and made it intensely cinematic,” he said. “I listened to numerous other rap songs but nothing seemed as smart and funny. And it sets everything up like it’s the beginning of a song cycle.” Listen to the cover below.
Amos is no stranger to inventive covers. In 1992, she made a piano cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and in 2001, she covered Eminem, Slayer, and more for her album Strange Little Girls. Just this past summer, she covered two Sinead O’Connor songs in honor of the late Irish singer.
As for Horn, Echoes is his latest cover album, following 2019’s ‘80s-themed cover project, Reimagines the Eighties. The new LP arrived in full on December 1st, and is available digitally as well as on CD and vinyl, with orders ongoing. Among the many guests included are Iggy Pop, Seal, Rick Astley, Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp, and more. Stream the album and heck out the artwork and tracklist below.
Meanwhile, Lamar is gearing up to perform at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda next week on December 6th for the Move Afrika: Rwanda touring project, organized by Global Citizen and Lamar’s creative imprint pgLang. Earlier this year, he re-recorded his verse on Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” for 1989 (Taylor’s Version).
Echoes: Ancient & Modern Artwork:
Echoes: Ancient & Modern Tracklist:
01. Swimming Pools (Drank) (feat. Tori Amos)
02. Steppin’ Out (feat. Seal)
03. Owner of a Lonely Heart (feat. Rick Astley)
04. Slave to the Rhythm (feat. Lady Blackbird)
05. Love Is a Battlefield (feat. Marc Almond)
06. Personal Jesus (feat. Iggy Pop and Phoebe Lunny)
07. Drive (feat. Steve Hogarth)
08. Relax (feat. Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp)
09. White Wedding (feat. Andrea Corr and Jack Lukeman)
10. Smells Like Teen Spirit (feat. Jack Lukeman)
11. Avalon
