Hayley Westenra Video's Kate and Joni

[Al Truest]

As many of you know, Hayley Westenra, an accomplished vocalist from New Zealand, had covered "Wuthering Heights" on a previous album. On her latest album "Odyssey" Hayley covers Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" You can watch the videos of both of these from the PBS website:


here

Do you think that this could also direct some traffic back to Kate Bush? And what do you think of the performances?

[Gelid]

Both Sides Now, in my opinion, is the better of the two. It's really not that tough of a song, so yeah, a good singer will sound good singing it. Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, was better than most anyone would have done it, but it doesn't sound very good (to me). Hayley did everything she was supposed to do in W.H., (Technical score of 8.7) but it sounded very forced. (Artistic score of 4.0) A song such as Wuthering Heights is probably a bad choice to cover because it is such a signature song (for Kate Bush). Even Pat Benetar did a marginal job when she recorded it. That song was written that way by Kate because she could sing it very well, and nobody can sing like Kate, so anyone who tries the song almost has to do something completely different with it. (Flame away!!)

[Kevin2]

I wasn't particularly impressed with either of the performances. She gets a score of 8.5 for looks - wow

Does she write songs - every one listed there was a cover. Really, Both Sides Now I found to be slightly less impressive than WH (and I do agree with Grimms comments about WH) - BSN was something of a nodder. A little more fire - an electric guitar or high-pitched synth or scattershot snare drum or... something unexpected would have livened it up a bit.

Hayley has definitely seen the WH video. I have no idea how much activity the site gets but since Kate is mentioned there...

I guess she doesn't write songs; that's probably why you said 'vocalist.'

[Adey]

It's been some time since I last listened to WH - I'm actually quite ambivilent about the song, not one of my faves.. So it was a shock to hear this version and it's near total repetition of Kate's own performance (vocally, rather than visually). It's a labour of love obviously for Hayley, and she acquits herself well, but I find that even after all these years Kate is still defined to many people by WH and that's not really representative of her at all..

Both Sides Now is a classic of course. It's a nice version by Hayley, with something of Joni Mitchell's purity of tone about it. Very pleasant if predictable.