Taking Back Sunday Strip Down Kanye West
With some powerful singing and a pair of acoustic guitars, Taking Back Sunday turn Kanye West's seething rap anthem "Can't Tell Me Nothing" into a soulful jam in this week's installment of Mashup Mondays.
"We're big fans of Kanye West," says TBS singer Adam Lazzara, "and that new record he put out is so great. But 'Can't Tell Me Nothing,' there was this theme in the song of redemption, and I think that's pretty cool."
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 Taking Back Sunday at Billboard. |
Lazzara and guitarist John Nolan, who form Taking Back Sunday with guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Shaun Cooper and drummer Mark O'Connell, admit that they aren't too familiar with the current fare on the Hot 100, but were intrigued with turning West's track into a rock tune. "When we first did it, we were just playing around with different arrangements of it, and we figured if we were gonna have guitars and no beats or anything that probably the best way to do it was just to try to format it like a rock song or a folk song," says Lazzara.
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"Can't Tell Me Nothing" helped propel West's third album, "Graduation," to the top of the Billboard 200 in 2007; meanwhile, Taking Back Sunday's self-titled fifth album debuted at No. 17 last month. The alt-rockers will continue supporting the new disc with a U.K. tour later this month.
Check out a special performance of Taking Back Sunday's single "Faith (When I Let You Down) below.
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