Justin Bieber Cover: Neon Trees Digs Deep to Tap Into Its Inner Biebster
Listening to Neon Trees' cover of Justin Bieber's "Baby" makes you wish someone had told them, "Baby, baby, baby. Noooooo" beforehand. All due respect for giving a shout-out to a fellow artist on their label, Island, but nothing takes the edge off a rock band quite like covering a song by a pop star whose voice just recently cracked.
Frontman Tyler Glenn said the band wanted to cover something popular and put its spin on it. At least he is upfront about hitching his wagon to a hit song. The spin is more of an amble; the song sounds exactly the same until the middle, when they do the Biebster a major favor by cutting Ludacris's inane rap and replacing it with Ben E. King's "Stand By Me." This section was much less compromising to their artistic integrity, and we wish they had forgone Bieber for this entirely. It certainly beats cringing at Luda's lyrics: "She woke me up daily/Don't need no Starbucks," and, "She knows she's got me dazing/Cuz she was so amazing."
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