Version
By the time Mark Ronson released his second album, his gold-tier production chops had been established by the retro-soul coating he’d applied to Amy Winehouse’s *Back to Black*. On this collection of playfully inventive covers, the pair unites again, turning The Zutons’ “Valerie” from bluesy rock into emotive, shining soul. That and other UK chart-scaling singles—including reworkings of Kaiser Chiefs’ “Oh My God” and The Smiths\' “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” starring Lily Allen and Daniel Merriweather, respectively—affirm his Midas touch. But the album’s less-celebrated tracks just as effectively showcase the imagination and craft that have served him so well in subsequent years. The Jam’s “Pretty Green” burns vividly after being doused in dance-punk and Santigold’s punchy vocals, and with Robbie Williams adding new emotional bite, The Charlatans’ “The Only One I Know” is transformed from a baggy anthem into a Northern soul stomper.
The hip-hop/nu-soul producer who played a large role in recent albums by Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse enlists some famous friends for a covers album that includes takes on songs by Radiohead, the Smiths, and Coldplay, among others.
In England, where it's been out since April, Mark Ronson's second album largely registers as a novelty record. It features big UK pop stars—Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Kasabian, Robbie Williams—doing karaoke of other people's songs (and sometimes their own) over Ronson's knowingly retro-soul backings. But in the U.S.,…
One of the most eagerly anticipated albums of the year and certainly one that’s had some serious air play over the preceding months, Ronson’s sophomore album, Version, has arrived. A departure from his rap influenced debut, as the title suggests, this is…
You know that a producer has become a star in his own right when he's given a contract to put out an album under his own name -- but, really, if any producer deserved his own vanity project in 2007, it's Mark Ronson, the man behind much of the two best British pop albums in 2006, Lily Allen's Alright, Still and Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. Ronson, of course, had been a fixture in the N.Y.C. and London DJ scenes long before this, and had even released an album called Here Comes the Fuzz in 2003 that found him enlisting a cast of American hipsters -- everyone from Ghostface Killah and Mos Def to Rivers Cuomo, Jack White, and Saturday Night Live comedian Jimmy Fallon -- to front tracks he crafted.
Mark Ronson gives us an album of covers, politely borrowed from a reasonably wide variety of contemporary popesque acts.
Mark Ronson - Version review: Ronson strips pop tracks of their rock instruments and rebuilds them brilliantly with hip hop beats and upbeat Motown arrangements