Oh my sweet, sweet readers, I feel badly about pulling such a fast one on you like this.  I bet you were expecting a funk cover of a non-funk song, or a funk-oriented remix or mash-up.

YOINK!

I had a lot of options to choose from, lest you incorrectly assume a paucity of musical ideas.  Au contraire.  It’s just…well, let me put it this way.  A good re-working of a song is like seeing an actor do a particularly fine job portraying a character: you can’t so easily see that person’s face and not think of the emotions their character made you feel.  So too with this song.  I adored Kylie’s song when it came out.  It was slick, sexy, and had a great beat.  …Then I heard this version.  And poof!  Bye, Kylie, thanks for trying.  For better or for worse, Patrick and Eugene’s bizarro-world, klezmer carnival version supplanted the original.  It’s possible the reason is – and this really is a curse, let me tell you – I tend to be way more interested in things that are weird than I am things that are easy.  Kylie’s song was a very well-constructed, well-packaged, dull song.  Standard girl-sees-boy, girl-wants-boy fare.  P and E’s version is unsettling, difficult to read, and absolutely hilarious (I had a really hard time mood-tagging this one).  When they get to the “stay forever and ever” lyric, I feel oddly compelled to shout “IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN OR ELSE IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN.”*  Like I said: it’s a curse, being more interested in weird things.

*”Silence of the Lambs” reference?  Anyone?  …Anyone?

Original song here: