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Hear Lydia Loveless Reinvent Justin Bieber's 'Sorry'

Lydia Loveless unlocks the slow-burning desperation at the heart of an electro-pop banger.
David T. Kindler
/
Courtesy of the artist
Lydia Loveless unlocks the slow-burning desperation at the heart of an electro-pop banger.

There's nothing all that novel about covering a fizzy pop song as if it were a slow, bluesy dirge — any more than it's novel to cover a ballad as if it were a speedball punk jam. Radical transformations aren't radical in and of themselves. What's actually interesting is covering a song in a way that reveals something deeper, darker or just different, whether it's Mark Kozelek locating the vulnerability within AC/DC's "Bad Boy Boogie" or Lydia Loveless unpacking the fear, sadness and defiant defensiveness that swirl under the surface of Justin Bieber's "Sorry."

In Bieber's version — and, yes, that video has been viewed two and a half billion times — the pop star casts himself as a cad who's risking as little as possible to get what he wants; right upfront, he spins his faults as mere surplus honesty, thus dispensing the most unsatisfying possible apology. But Loveless' bluesy plainspokenness unlocks just the right amount of slow-burning desperation. (See also: the cover of Ke$ha's "Blind" Loveless recorded back in 2015.) Maybe it's a matter of stripping away the Bieber song's almost maniacally zippy electro-pop production, but her version makes the emotional stakes seem higher, and the self-pity seem harder-won.

"I actually came to this song quite oddly," Loveless writes via email. "My brother showed me the "Obama overdubs" version, and it was the first time I really paid attention to the lyrics and music. I realized it's a beautiful song, but as with a lot of pop songs, the production overrides the melody and... well, it's Justin Bieber. I was walking through the park in some city on tour a while ago and listening to it and thinking about covering it at the show that night. And when I sat down to learn it, I just felt really moved singing it. I went into the studio with [guitarist] Todd [May], and he played this really pretty reverb part over it, and it was just simple and somber to me. People keep asking me what I hear in it. I guess there's nothing like a breakup to make you lean on a tight pop song."

"Sorry" is available now, as a B-side to the digital single "Desire," via Bloodshot.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)