Today’s song is a cover of an older song by Janis Ian. The cover artist is Shiina Ringo, one of my favorites, and the song appeared on her 2-disc cover album Utaite Myori. It’s “Love is Blind.”

Why? While the original is also quite good, Shiina Ringo’s intense vocals really elevates the song to a new type of emo anger. It changes the song from a sense of bitterness from Janis Ian to agonizing pain on Shiina Ringo, who sounds like she’s literally hurting just singing. It’s really one of the most incredible covers I’ve ever heard.

Someone just took the song and put it on the video for Ringo No Uta, so watching is not necessary, just listen and feel it.

Here is a concert version where Shiina sings it at a lower key. In my opinion, it’s actually not as good as the album version.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 6:57 pm and is filed under The Song of the Day. 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.