Burning Down The House — Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie RaittSONG OF THE DAY

“Burn­ing Down The House” by Bon­nie Raitt (Road Tested, Capi­tol Records, 1995). Writ­ten by David Byrne.

WHY TODAY?

This incred­i­ble ver­sion of this song was fea­tured in a dance party scene in Six Feet Under, and was con­se­quently brought back into my con­scious­ness. I had men­tioned it ear­lier in this blog in an entry about the Talk­ing Heads, but never fea­tured it as a Song Of The Day, so I’m happy to for­mally intro­duce it to you today. Enjoy!

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– “Burn­ing Down the House” is a 1983 song by Talk­ing Heads.

- It became their highest-charting hit sin­gle in North Amer­ica, reach­ing #9.

- Chris Frantz thought of the tit­u­lar cho­rus after see­ing a Parliament-Funkadelic show where the crowd chanted “Burn down the house.”

- In an inter­view on NPR’s “All Things Con­sid­ered” aired on Decem­ber 2, 1984, David Byrne played excerpts of early work­tapes show­ing how the song had evolved from an instru­men­tal jam by Tina Wey­mouth (bass) and Chris Frantz (drums). Once the whole band had reworked the groove into some­thing resem­bling the final record­ing, Byrne began chant­ing and singing non­sense syl­la­bles over the music until he had arrived at phras­ing that fit with the rhythms– a tech­nique influ­enced by for­mer Talk­ing Heads pro­ducer Brian Eno– “and then I [would] just write words to fit that phras­ing… I’d have loads and loads of phrases col­lected that I thought the­mat­i­cally had some­thing to do with one another, and I’d pick from those.”

- “Burn­ing Down the House” is #29 on VH1’s list of “The 100 Great­est Songs of the ‘80s”.

- A sec­tion of the song was cov­ered by “Weird Al” Yankovic on his “Polkas on 45″ polka medley.

- It was also cov­ered by Tom Jones with The Cardi­gans in Jones’s 1999 album Reload.

- John Leg­end also cov­ered the song on his “Live at SOB’s” album.

- A ver­sion by the Vienna Boys’ Choir can be found on their 2002 album Vienna Boys’ Choir Goes Pop.

- Mar­cus Miller also did a jazz/funk cover of this song.

- Dave Matthews Band has cov­ered the song dur­ing its con­cert tours, debut­ing the tune at Louisville Slug­ger Ball­park on August 1, 2008. They released a ver­sion of the song on their live album Live Trax Vol. 15.

- The Used also cov­ered the song in 2009 and is included on the Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack.

- Here’s the track list­ing for Bon­nie Raitt’s live album (it’s a rather fas­ci­nat­ing list!):

  1. “Thing Called Love” (John Hiatt) – 4:48
  2. “Three Time Loser” (Don Covay, Ronald Dean Miller) – 3:39
  3. “Love Let­ter” (Bon­nie Hayes) – 4:37
  4. “Never Make Your Move Too Soon” (Hooper, Will Jen­nings) – 3:32
  5. “Some­thing to Talk About” (Shirley Eikhard) – 3:43
  6. “Mat­ters of the Heart” (Michael McDon­ald) – 4:58
  7. “Shake a Lit­tle” (Michael Ruff) – 4:38
  8. “Have a Heart” (Bon­nie Hayes) – 5:45
  9. “Love Me Like a Man” (Chris Smither) – 5:11
  10. “The Kokomo Med­ley” (Mis­sis­sippi Fred McDow­ell) – 4:59
  11. “Louise” (Paul Siebel) – 3:46
  12. “Dim­ming of the Day” (Richard Thomp­son) – 4:19
  13. “Long­ing in Their Hearts” (Jack­son Browne, O’Keefe) – 5:02
  14. “Come to Me” (Raitt) – 5:02
  15. “Love Sneakin’ up on You” (Lit­tle Jimmy Scott, Tom Snow) – 3:52
  16. “Burn­ing Down the House” (David Byrne) – 4:21
  17. “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (Mike Reid, James Allen Sham­blin) – 6:00
  18. “Feel­ing of Falling” (Raitt) – 6:45
  19. “I Believe I’m in Love with You” (Kim Wil­son) – 5:24
  20. “Rock Steady” (Bryan Adams, Gretchen Peters) – 4:12
  21. “My Open­ing Farewell” (Jack­son Browne) – 4:57
  22. “Angel from Mont­gomery” (John Prine) – 5:37

VIDEO OF THE DAY


Bon­nie Raitt-Burning Down the House
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