Usually when people make Christmas presents instead of buying them, the presents are useless and/or ugly and/or IOU breakfast in bed cards which are real cop-outs. No one ever collects on those! But this Christmas eve, Sondre Lerche made us a gift in his father-in-law's basement, and probably because he's a talented, popular, professional musician, it's really good! Lerche -- who covered Owen Pallett exactly a year ago and Animal Collective the year before that -- wrote on his Web site that Christmas covers of his favorite songs of the year are now "officially a tradition." This year, it all came down to "Changes," by Sandro Perri and Beyonce's "Countdown," which he went with. Because everyone loves when white people cover Beyonce!
"Both proved equally impossible to tackle or do justice to alone. But it's what I do, and there are worse jobs, so I did it. I took the liberty of making some gender-oriented changes to the lyrics to better accommodate my macho-persona (although I wouldn't dare tamper with Beyonce's appeal to all women to show their man they are the fliest simply by grinding "up on it girl, show him how you ride it"). That being said, the trick is to get passed the novelty-factor and just sing a beautiful song at the best of your abilities."
Here you go, then: a beautiful novelty item to play while you bend pipe-cleaner into "earring racks" (not a good gift!):
LISTEN:
And for comparison's sake, Bey's version:
(via Consequence of Sound)