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U2: “Get on Your Boots”
U2 apparently traveled all the way to Fez, Morocco to work on its forthcoming album No Line on the Horizon, and if “Get on Your Boots” is any indication, they’ve soaked up plenty of culture. Ethnic percussion, check. Eastern sounding harmonic minor riffs, also check. But there’s really no telling where the rapped verse/sung chorus came from, although it’s entirely possibly that it came from Chinese Democracy.
Dirty Projectors w/ David Byrne: “Knotty Pine”
Dirty Projectors perfectly replicate the sound of the early Talking Heads with jittery acoustic guitars and oblique lyrics that sound as if theywere cribbed directly from David Byrne’s notebooks circa ’76 (note: further inspection of my Talking Heads box set reveals that the line quoted below was actually borrowed from one of Bryne’s notebooks). It also helps that the man himself steps in to deliver a few lines. “Here is the sound that photographs make/when I see them/when I hear them,” sing Byrne and David Longstreth.
Lady Sovereign: “I got you dancing (medasyn dub remix)”
Medasyn, who produced the original version of this song for Lady Sovereign’s upcoming second album, twiddles the knobs on “I Got You Dancing” resulting in, well, way less of the diminutive English rapper. Sovereign’s vocals are almost completely knocked out, leaving only buzzing machine funk.
Ciara: “I Don’t Remember”
This song, supposedly drawn from the sessions for Ciara’s upcoming record Fantasy Ride, finds the singer feeling busted after a night spent modeling lampshades, possibly for Wilhemina. “Got the same clothes on today that I had on yesterday, what did I do? what did I say?,” asks the penitent singer. Ciara may not recall how she pissed off her boyfriend, but the song’s fuzzy synths imply that at the very least, she can still remember Kraftwerk.