We rarely showcase covers in NMC but could hardly overlook Stockholm electronic duo Red Cell and their ambitious attempt to channel Lady Gaga’s late 2024 release ‘Disease’, one of her first efforts after returning from an ‘acting break’ (as you do).
Gaga has shared that ‘Disease’ and its Day of the Dead zombie style music video were inspired by her facing up to her own fears and “inner darkness”, interpreted as mental ones as multiple versions of herself fighting each other occupy the video but quite possibly attributed to her by now well documented physical ailments as well.
With those versions all seemingly dead or bestial, including one that is a dead ringer (pardon the pun) for Samara Morgan in The Ring, it’s one of the darkest things she has done after all and there’s been plenty of dark in her repertoire over the years.
Ms Germanotta was widely lauded for her vocal performance on the song as well as for that Gothic style cinematic video.
So what can Red Cell, a duo best known for their emphatically melodic EDM numbers, bring to the party?
It seems they chose to do it to welcome the poker-faced bad romancer to Stockholm when she visits this month (12th October), to send an “unexpected greeting”.
(I hope they aren’t going to do that for every big US name that plays Stockholm. I can’t imagine them covering Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. Olivia Rodrigo perhaps, I’ll throw down a challenge to cover her right now).
Their reinterpretation is intended to transform the original’s darkness into something colder, harder, and even darker still and they have a history of uncompromising covers of unexpected songs like Ace of Base’ ‘All that she wants’.
They say they were particularly attracted to “the quirky vibe and harmonies in Gaga’s version that reminded us of Nirvana or grunge somehow.”
But out-Gaga-ing Gaga is a challenge and a half. So how did they fare?
Pretty well as it happens. I’m not sure it’s any darker but their ever so slightly slowed down take, with its clever synthesiser adaptation of Gaga’s screams (no-one is going to try to replicate them!) has every bit as much of the power and purpose of the original, both musically and vocally.
If it was the original they’d be the ones performing it at Madison Square Garden rather than Gaga.
I was about to suggest they make their own video of it but then an image of Jimmy Skeppstedt and Stefan Aronsson having a handbags at dawn over a white picket fence in only bra and panties popped into my mind and I quickly drew a line under that.
We are a family publication after all.
Find them on:
Website: https://www.redcell.nu
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redcellmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redcellmusic
