Too Little Too Late / And a Little Too Wrong

Embarrassing to realize but generative for blog fodder: a song I like is actually a cover of something horrible.

Here, for your consideration, is a YouTube video highlighting the song “Too Little Too Late,” by Daniel Rossen. (Ignore the accompanying animations. In fact, just minimize the window and listen to the song a bit.)

Rossen writes music and plays guitar for the band Grizzly Bear, which I very much so want to like but, so far, have not been able to, regardless of good reviews and friends’ ravings. This song, however, totally won me over. Lushly instrumented, a little gothic, and a little dour, it represents the opposite of what pop music usually is but the best of what it could be.

Then I found out it was a cover of a song by JoJo, the newly 18-year-old singer-actress whose existence I otherwise had no reason to acknowledge. (I admit it right now: I was not exactly the first in line to buy tickets for Aquamarine.) JoJo is one of those nymphet vocalists who practice that sultry, warbling style of singing that so often sounds like melodic sex moans. Which is just wrong, given that she’s only recently moved out of Statutory County, USA. All this aside, she did sing the original version of “Too Little Too Late.”

That’s what I get for trying to like music — status as a backdoor JoJo fan.

Previous songs of the week:

• The B-52s, “Funplex”
• Bill Withers, “Who Is He (And What Is He to You?)”
  
• Bruce Springsteen, “I’m on Fire”
  
• The Budos Band, “His Girl”
• CSS, “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex”
• The Fiery Furnaces, “Ex-Guru”
• Jenny Lewis, “Fernando”
• Men at Work, “(Land) Down Under”
• RJD2, “A Beautiful Mine”
• Roy Orbison, “I Drove All Night”
• The Seekers, “Georgy Girl”
• She & Him, “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”