Wow. Talk about auto-tune overload. When I heard George Michael was going to be covering New Order's True Faith, this wasn't what I was expecting. I imagined a more straight-up version of the song instead of this drastic re-invisioning. I guess in a way what he's done with it is a good thing; it's far enough from the original that I can like it on its own merits. But unfortunately, at the end of the day, it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Let's be fair, it's not a bad version, per se. It's all very sunny and chilled-out. You could sit on a tropical beach sipping cocktails to this. But it all feels so aimless, like George just pulled the vocal out in one take over a swirly soup of guitar and synths, and then shoved a load of auto-tune on it.
This was never going to be good as New Order's True Faith. But I was yearning for something so much more here. It's a shame because if this was a track on its complete own right, it'd be fantastic. But as with all cover versions, there is always that danger of comparison. Ahhh well, shove a big fat dance beat underneath it and it'll sound amazing.
