from Tourism New Zealand’s TV commercial featuring the cover of Alphaville’s song Forever Young

I, along with thousands of other online fiends, went seeking for that curious song on the TV commercial for Tourism New Zealand. I knew it sounded familiar. It seems many things that sound familiar these days lead back to the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite, as an acoustic guitar version of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s Music For A Found Harmonium- a riff that has backed countless youtube clips – gave us that deja-vu feeling that the movie was so skilled at doing.

Not only was German band Alphaville’s (original band name was “Forever Young”) 1989 hit Forever Young used in Napoleon Dynamite during the prom scene, it was also remade by the Aussie band Youth Group in 2005 for the TV show the O.C..

Enter now Milan Borich and the New Zealand band Pluto, to remake once again, Forever Young for the Tourism New Zealand commercial. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a beautiful version, combining an almost identical rhythm created by Youth Group, with original lyrics and music written by Alphaville, and go lower by a few notes (keys). Essentially, it’s a remake of a remake. For Aussies, imagine your favorite INXS song remade by Pennsylvania’s Ween, then remade again by Liza Minelli.

Those of you who know me as a songwriter have heard my rants on a need to push for new original material to keep the continuum of the “oral” history in songwriting alive.

I’m sure with the interest expressed on the internet, Pluto will eventually come out with their remake. But if you can’t wait, you can go get an mp3 version of Youth Group’s Forever Young here. Take my word for it: it’s almost identical to the one featured in Tourism New Zealand’s commercial.

You could also go for Hamel’s remix on the piece, utilizing Alphaville’s original vocal track to a dance track. If you want to hear a girl sing it, Robin Ella has many dance versions on Forever Young Remixes.

Curiously, the people who brought this song into the world, Alphaville, released an 8-cd box set of their demo songs in 1999′s Dreamscapes, and Forever Young, recorded as a demo in 1977, is featured in the collection. Wikipedia describes this version as “shockingly modern,” so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Youth Group found inspiration for their remake in Alphaville’s 30 year old Forever Young.

That’s the problem with remakes. The labyrinthine path to track down credit where credit is due, is only open to the stalwart few who are stuck at home on a snowy Saturday night.

I will say that constantly remaking a song called Forever Young is brilliant. It’s almost as if people who sing “hope I die before I get old” call it permanent quits at 50, then reunite every successive year, and fans- who thought they’d never get to hear their favorite rockers rock again- continue to attend their concerts year after year, paying top dollar just to hear them sing “won’t get fooled again” again. But that’s just my imagination running wild.

(To read about my other song tracking adventure, try The Global Search for that haunting choir from Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu)

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 1:12 am and is filed under Leisure, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.