Conchita and Tuesday Microgrooves add raw emotion and a jazz arrangement to create a touching ‘Jupiter Drive‘
Swedish singer songwriter Loreen’s sophomore album Ride was pretty much a non-event last year, as it hit the 31st spot on the Swedish charts and then was promptly ignored by the rest of the world.
A huge shame for a singer that is so phenomenally talented she should be world-renowned.
For me, while I loved several of the songs on the album, the least appealing was ‘Jupiter Drive’. A track with a pretty melody, but with repetitive lyrics and an over-production that made you miss the intense emotion underneath.
So I was surprised to see Austrian singer songwriter Conchita (also a Eurovision winner, and a Loreen fan herself) releasing a music video of a cover of ‘Jupiter Drive’ today.
A cover she collaborated on with Graz-based musicians Tuesday Microgrooves.
Conchita’s ‘Jupiter Drive‘ feat. Tuesday Microgrooves
I have to admit, as Conchita’s ‘Jupiter Drive‘ popped up in my YouTube feed and I clicked on it, I was stifling a bit of an inward groan.
Because as much as I could listen to Conchita sing the back of a muesli box, I could think of 100 other songs I would rather hear her sing. Particularly if Conchita’s version of the Loreen track ended up as heavy-handedly produced as the original.
From the first few seconds of the video, however, it becomes obvious Conchita’s ‘Jupiter Drive‘ is night and day away from the Loreen original.
Stripped down as it is, and starting as it does with the melancholic strains of a rich cello, the dark thump of a bass and the deceptive lightness of a piano.
Because what Conchita with that voice and Tuesday Microgrooves with their evocative music do here is add a raw emotion the original did not have.
An emotion that has ‘Jupiter Drive‘ go from a heavy slug of a synth pop song to one that Conchita, with that gorgeous crackle she has in her voice and that naked drama she always sings with, makes sound quietly devastating.
Because that crackle, that emotion and that elegance she brings to so many songs — it is raw, real and causes you to believe she really is dying inside.
Related reading: Conchita’s ‘From Vienna with Love‘ with the Wiener Symphoniker is a thing of beauty
Only emotional abuse, disappointment and a lot of sadness could create an artist this superb
Finally, there is something I always think about when I hear Conchita sing a song like ‘Jupiter Drive‘. A song that, if you listen to the lyrics closely, will make you remember how it felt when you loved someone so much and realized they did not love you back.
A song she has the ability to add a gut-wrenching emotion to that so many other artists cannot.
A thought that, as odd as it may sound, sometimes I am quite thankful that she (he) had to live through the emotional abuse and intense disappointments that often seemed to tinge the first 20-odd years of Conchita’s life.
Because without that abuse, that sadness, those disappointments she experienced, I honestly believe Conchita would not be able to attain the depths of feeling she does when she sings.
Nor be able to project the steel-like inner strength she developed because of it. A strength that comes through in every song.
Even when she is singing about utter devastation.
The way the emotions she feels as she sings play across her face. The way her voice often seems to reach down to her very soul to pull those emotions free.
Because nobody who hasn’t experienced that intense pain themselves again and again and again would ever know where to start to even look for it.
To me, it is that pain and her ability to grab it and present it for her audience to feel that will always make Conchita the one I love the most.
Listen to Conchita’s ‘Jupiter Drive‘ featuring Tuesday Microgrooves, and their stunning jazz arrangement, in her video below.
It really is quite lovely.