Wednesday, October 12th 2011
News: Karen O
Listen As Karen O Covers A Willie Nelson Classic… For Chipotle?
A recently initiated campaign by the ever-popular fast-food chain Chipotle in raising public awareness of the harms of industrial farming has led to some very interesting developments in the music world. With striking short films backed by unlikely songs covered by even more unlikely artists, the organization has proved successful in calling attention to the benefits of sustainable, eco-friendly farming as opposed to the highly precarious industrial modus, which has become the prevalent practice in modern-day agriculture.
Back in August, the company unveiled an outstanding stop-motion film that featured Willie Nelson covering Coldplay’s The Scientist. A few days ago, in yet another unlikely merger of sounds, another video was introduced; this time with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs covering the 1975 Ed Bruce song Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys – which coincidentally was later popularized by Nelson in 1978. The cover is stunning.
The nicely-shot video, titled Abandoned, attempts to exhibit the deprived condition’s of today’s farmers by displaying a group of young teenagers vandalizing an abandoned home, only to discover that those who deserted the property were no different than the youngsters’ own families, which then drives them to urgently return to their families, with a frightening realization and a newly-found sense of empathy.
Meanwhile, aside from covering other classic tunes with Oscar winning composers, Ms. O has been quite busy in the past few months, producing an off-Broadway play, Stop The Virgens, which opens today at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The play is described to be “an assault on the tragic joys of youth, fever dreams drenched in visual seduction, a cathartic spell spun through a cycle of nine songs” – whatever that means. It runs from October 12th to October 22nd, and should prove to be a great treat for fans of theater or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman’s expansive body of work, which we hope to hear more of soon.
