The Kidz are Alright, Part Two
Parsley, 03/19/04
This is the second in a series of articles reviewing pop music performed by children.
The Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop
It’s fairly common knowledge that the bottom has fallen out of the classical music market (jazz too, but that’s another story). And unlike those lucky bastards in the pop music world, the world’s classical artists can’t just blame Napster and march angrily to war. The really successful classical albums these days are usually some kind of bland pseudo-operatic crooning (Josh Groban, Charlotte Church), the lightweight classical ambitions of pop performers like Billy Joel and Michael Bolton, or the latest effort from whichever young violinist is willing to wear the shortest skirt. It’s the kind of situation that could make even the stoutest flautist weep with despair.
But some classical ensembles have the prepubescent stones to do something about it. In 2002 the well-known Vienna Boys Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben in their native tongue) recorded an album of popular favorites in what one can only assume was an attempt to break into previously unexplored markets. The Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop delivers on some of the promise Kidz Bop left unfulfilled, and while it still falls short of pop greatness, it is a real triumph of the gloriously odd: odd song selections, odd arrangements, and odd pronunciations.
Perhaps in a bid to reassert the Choir’s status as the original boy band, the album cover features a few of the Wieners posing in what appears to be an ostentatiously modern airport terminal, recreating every Backstreet Boys video ever. I have not seen a full-size version of the cover, but the preview images I’ve seen suggest that the Boys may also be dressed for a Village People video set in the Matrix. The baffling outcome of this shameless attempt at marrying the pop and choral realms provides a good preview of the music inside.
I’m not sure I would call The Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop a success, but one thing’s for certain: unlike the obnoxiously vapid Kidz Bop, it’s a very entertaining listen. The Choir makes some surprisingly bold song selections, most notably “Nothing Else Matters” from Metallica’s Black Album, the Police’s “Message in a Bottle,” and “Burning Down the House” by the Talking Heads. Sure, Celine Dion’s Titanic song is covered, as well as an Enya tune (does it really matter which one?), but the overall mix is a lot more interesting than you might expect, reaching out to include the Bangles and Sinead O’Connor. Even the album’s token Beatles song is the kinda-druggy “All You Need is Love” instead of a safer pick like “Yesterday” or “Let It Be,” and I think the group deserves some credit for that.
So if there was ever going to be a really good “kids sing pop songs” album, it seems like this should be it, right? Internationally acclaimed singers, respectable material, and surely someone in the Boys Choir operation knows a thing or two about good music — what else could you want? But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and Sängerknaben.
The instrumental backing tracks are just disappointing. There is not a single real analog instrument on the record. I know this sort of thing is extremely common these days, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. It would be one thing if the synthesized instruments were realistic. I know it can be done. I’m sure I’ve listened to synthesized guitars, probably even on albums I like, and not noticed the difference. But everything sounds fake here. Where a simple piano or organ sound would suffice, the producers drown it in flange, add a ridiculous echo, or insert entirely-uncalled-for levels of funk. The drum machine (yes, there’s a drum machine, and it’s in every song) sounds like it escaped from the 1980’s. The love of the Germanic peoples for electronic music is well-known, but if anything I would expect the land of Kraftwerk to produce better bleeps and beats than non-Aryan countries (Yes, I’m aware Vienna is actually in Austria. Wanna make something of it?). And for that matter, it’s not like there’s a shortage of actual guitarists out there.
Without a doubt, the high point of the album is the Boys’ rendition of “Nothing Else Matters.” The featured soloist on the verses captures James Hetfield’s signature growl about as well as is possible for a pre-teen Austrian soprano, which is to say not very well at all, but enough that you can definitely recognize what he’s trying to do. The dissonance between the soloist’s affected Hetfieldian drawl and his Teutonic vocal precision makes for some extremely interesting interpretations of the material to say the least. But where the song really comes into its own is the chorus. While fake strings swell beneath them, the full choir carefully pronounces “Never cared for what they do, ooh ooh woo!” at the top of their lungs. Somehow it manages to inflate and deflate Metallica’s considerable pretension at the same time — the song is so dramatic and intense it can only be properly rendered by 100-some singing youths (trust me on this one), but once you do that it sounds so ridiculous that it just can’t be taken seriously anymore.
The oddness of the whole project is apparent on other tracks as well, like the inexplicably reggae-tinged version of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” A classically trained Austrian boys’ choir is about as far from David Byrne’s nervous delivery as you can get, but I think “Burning Down the House” actually works better than most of the songs on the album, and it’s one of my favorites here. “Message in a Bottle” sounds surprisingly natural. The Enya cover that closes the album is pretty much indistinguishable from the original, but that’s Enya for you.
So what was the Vienna Boys Choir’s goal in recording this album? Was it to create a CD that would appeal to young pop fans? Certainly they were not successful in that respect. The boys’ vocal delivery is just about as far from cool as you can get, the arrangements are almost universally non-rockin’, and many of the song selections are more suited to kids from the 80’s than current pop audiences. Was Goes Pop instead intended to introduce the Choir’s stodgy classical audience to the beauty and value of today’s popular music? It’s a storyline straight out of a hundred bad music movies, but if this was the Choir’s intent the album is an even greater failure. The crappy synthesized sounds will play right into snobby stereotypes about the poor musicianship and production values of pop (Indeed, some devoted boys choir fans complain that the Vienna Choir’s singing on this record is not up to par).
Maybe the album was recorded primarily for the benefit of the boys, a way for them to have a little fun singing the songs they hear on the radio, maybe even get this rock ‘n’ roll nonsense out of their systems. There’s something sweetly pathetic about that — the Sängerknaben can never really be like normal boys; they’re just too good, too dedicated (once you go Bach you never go back), but they see our everyday pop superstars, the Mighty Ducks to their powerful Soviet boys’ hockey team, having a good time over there and wish they could join in. You can almost hear their wistful sighs as they get back in the van to go sing the Messiah in yet another big cathedral somewhere.
We may never know why The Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop came into this crazy world, but we can be glad that it did. I can’t say that this album is very well done, or that it will touch your emotions in any sincere way, but what I can promise is that you will laugh out loud when you listen to it. It’s so surprising and so unusual that you will be entertained in spite of yourself. Sure, sure, it’s an equal heresy against pop music and the classical tradition, but if it makes people happy, can it really be so bad?
Next installment: The Kids of Widney High, Special Music from Special Kids