When you think of Lynyrd Skynyrd, you don't get an image of fresh-faced Princeton students in L.L. Bean clothing making gay carousel noises: boop boop dooba doobee boop. But that's a capella conceit for you. As they say, it's so outrageous and obnoxious, it's almost amusing.
Followers of the blog know that periodically I post examples of college twits, poofs and whiffens who think their dulcet voices require no drums, brass or strings. The glory of the human voice is enough. They think.
A cappella is a tradition that goes back to a mother crooning a lullaby to her baby, or monks performing Gregorian chants on each other. One of the few successful hit songs in the genre was "The Tiger Rag" by The Mills Brothers, who mimicked musical instruments while harmonizing. Mostly a cappella is a scary exercise in egotism and pretention.
Your example below is, yes, “Sweet Home Alabama” dampened by rich Princeton wet noodles wet-nursing the rhythm with “dooba doo” noises, and vocals that exchange Cracker Barrell cheese drawling for Brie breathing. Bandwidth being what it is, you don’t get their lame takes on Seal, Wham, 3 Doors Down, Fountains of Wayne etc. You don’t get their less egregious sins, such as buttering songs by creampuffs such as Dido, Eric Carmen or Sarah MacLachlan.
If you want to look for the CD, it’s called “Beginning to see the Light” (a metaphor that doesn’t really apply to hearing a capella), produced by The Princeton Roaring 20 circa 2005. “Special thanks to our families and our friends, our amazing alumni for all their support.” Their audiences probably consisted entirely of their families, friends, and indulgent alumni. Strange things come out of the orifaces of humans. Yabba dabaa do.
SWEET HOME ALABAMA as you have NEVER heard it before - Listen online or download. No ego passwords, no Russian spyware server
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