Leo Sayer has “Leofied” The Beatles for his new album ‘Northern Songs’.
‘Northern Songs’ is Leo Sayer’s homage to The Beatles. He has been working on the project for years, recording the songs over time from his home studio in New South Wales.
Leo tells Noise11.com how the project came about. “One of the first things I did when I thought of the idea, I was trying out my studio in Glebe when I was living in Sydney. I had just reconfigured the studio and I found a really good way of working on my won, so I could basically play everything, sing by myself and record at the same time. I was playing around with lots of different methods and hearing in my head The Beatles but hearing them as someone else might interpret them. The idea was like ‘what if Michael Jackson used the Billy Jean format’. And I listened to ‘Billie Jean’ and started to sing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and it suddenly fit. I thought ‘hang on, why not do it like that’. I kind of did it with every tune and listened to the song in my head rather than cross-refer the record”.
The idea was to deliberately not do a carbon copy cover of the original songs for ‘Northern Songs‘. “I would think about how you would hear The Beatles and how you would reimagine those songs. So I’d go and have a walk in the park and start singing ‘Norwegian Wood’ and somehow mix it up with a Bill Evans kind of jazz set-up”.
‘Northern Songs’ is meant to be fun. “All of these things came in like happy, fun marriages. The idea of making the record was to put the Beat in The Beatles and get some fun out of it”.
You can stream Leo Sayer ‘Northern Songs’ now. The CD will be available from February 25 and the vinyl not long after.
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