“Your Love” by Caroline Glaser (The Outfield cover), Monday, May 23, 2022

A coffee-shop singer songwriter and early YouTube music creator, Caroline Glaser (now Caroline Swon)'s breakthrough came when she auditioned and got a place on season 4 of NBC's talent show, The Voice. Three performances advanced her to further rounds, but she was cut on the forth round singing Ed Sheeran's "The A Team." After The Voice, Glaser recorded an 8-song self-titled record, from which today's song, a cover of The Outfield's 1985 debut hit single "Your Love," comes from. 

YOU KNOW I LIKE MY GIRLS A LITTLE OLDER. Other than a 2018 single, Glaser hasn't released any recent music under her name, but rather she started releasing music under the moniker Brother Bird and has released their first LP, gardens, last year. Also in 2018, Glaser married fellow The Voice alumni Colton Swon of the country duo The Swon Brothers, a group that had placed third on Season 4. Caroline's voice has a soft, singer-songwriter characteristic, but it has a lot of personality. Many of her songs are soft acoustic ballads, though for The Voice she performed the upbeat numbers "Tiny Dancer" and "Put Your Records On." She showed her flair for the Indie by covering Of Monsters and Mens' "Little Talks." On today's song, she strips down the '80s anthem to make it an introspective ballad. The Outfield's original version is built around layered harmonies, and clear instrumental production that gives the song a distinctive '80s taste. Glaser skips all of the "go big or go home" sound that The Outfield is famous for. Instead, her version feels a bit more desperate. 

I DON'T WANNA LOSE YOUR LOVE TONIGHT. I'd definitely recommend the original version over the Caroline Glaser version, just because it's anthemic and it makes more lyrical sense. The podcast Cover Me goes in depth about the original version of this song and looks at several covers of The Outfield's classic. One version the hosts examine is by a Queer-core  band, The Butchies, an all-female punk band that writes music celebrating queer love. As I was listening to Glaser's version today, I wondered if she was doing a similar concept with the song. "Your Love," as sung by The Outfield talks about a hidden relationship. The speaker would "do anything for "his secret love.” He wants to "stay the night but keep it under cover," possibly meaning to keep the romance hidden or just to keep it sexual. What a jerk. But then I was thinking about how the song could be queer coded if you just change a few details or the genders. And not to justify a jerk, but in times of sexual confusion, people get hurt. The clandestine affair in which the listener is begged to not go, but to remain and be "used," sounds like abuse, and it is. But it could be a deeper issue.

Caroline Glaser version:


The Outfield version: 






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