Pick Yr Version Fridays

Dear Casavista/Rancho Readers,

Which version of this song do you like better? I am having a hard time deciding.

Peter Gabriel makes the song sound really serious and personal. Apparently it's about him leaving Genesis. The stripped down acoustic arrangement really draws on the heart-strings. Imagine Peter atop a lonely hill somewhere in England, feeling his heart go boom-boom-boom and then deciding that he didn't want to be a party of Phil Collins's boom-boom-boom anymore. High drama.

But then again, Erasure's cover is revelatory. I don't think they could have found chessier synth tones. There are also those sweet airy sweep sounds that you hear in ultra-bad generic techno. The lasers and vocal distortion on the boom-boom-boom part really give Gabriel's passionate rendition a run for it's money. The whole song sounds like a cell phone ring. In fact, I wish this could be my cell phone ring. Speaking of cell phones, if you listen to the left side of the mix at about the 2:45 mark you can hear a a stuttering that is remarkably similar to the sound computer speakers make when your cell phone blows up nearby. The female vocals at the end are also a nice touch, but I think the weird scatting that Peter Gabriel does at the end of the song wins as far as unnecessary outro vocals go.

I think I'm going with the Peter Gabriel, but there's a good case to be made for the Erasure version as well.


Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill



Erasure - Solsbury Hill