Jona Byron’s cover of ‘The Times They Are A Changin’ was featured on The Astronaut Wives Club on Thursday night (Season 1, Episode 8 – “Abort“), and while I’m not a fan of the series (it’s clichéd and poorly written), I am a definite fan of this song. It’s beautiful.
As for Jona Byron, he is an Australian singer from Melbourne, and one incredibly accomplished person. He sings, he writes, he composes, he produces, he’s your true renaissance man. Something that I think comes through in his version of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A Changin‘, as it’s richer, slower, more mature and a more ‘whole’ song than the original, I think.
Voice-wise, because of his richness of sound and the raw emotional quality his voice has, Byron reminds me a little bit of British indie rock singer David Gray, who I’ve been in love with for decades.
Related: BØRNS ‘10,000 Emerald Pools‘ featured on The Astronaut Wives Club
The version of Byron’s ‘The Times They Are A Changin‘ that appears on The Astronaut Wives Club is a different one than the same track from his 2009 album Extinct Hearts. Byron reworked it this year when he found out the show was going to use it.
You can hear the reworked version of the track on Soundcloud. Or, if you’d like to hear the original version, which I like even better as I love the way the political commentary is woven into it, it’s on the Deezer plugin below.
You can also listen to Byron’s album Extinct Hearts on Deezer in its entirety, and then buy it on iTunes one of the major digital music sites.