You may know her as the singer-songwriter that opened for Nick Jonas and who is doing good things on the Independent Albums chart, but who knew that Diane Birch could take Haddaway‘s synthy, vintage ’90s club music classic “What Is Love?” and turn it into a spare, heartbreaking soul ballad? Check out Birch’s version, performed on a white Rhodes piano, is in this week’s Mashup Monday.
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“I think [‘What Is Love’] is a beautiful song, and I don’t think people would generally think of it in that way,” Birch says of why she chose Haddaway’s hit to perform. “That’s a way that I appreciate covers is when I see [the song] in a completely different way. ‘What is love / Baby don’t hurt me.’ It’s the classic torment of love and of course I can relate to that emotion.”
For her part, Birch’s 2009 debut album, “Bible Belt,” recently climbed to No. 22 on the Alternative Albums chart. Meanwhile, Haddaway’s “What Is Love” — which was used to great comic effect in the 1998 Saturday Night Live movie, “A Night At The Roxbury” — reached its chart zenith with a No. 9 performance on the Dance/Club Play chart back in 1993, when Birch was only ten years old.
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