23-year-old Irish singer/songwriter Rosie Carney has shared her quarantine project, a full-length cover of Radiohead’s 1995 album The Bends, via Color Study. It follows the release of her EP i dreamed i was the night earlier this year as well as her 2019 debut album, Bare.
In conjunction with the album release, Carney has also revealed the video for “High & Dry.” Carney says of the song:
It’s such an anthem. I wanted to try and maintain the power that the original holds whilst remaining true to myself in the process. I don’t think I’d ever paid too much attention to the lyrics of this song before covering it, and in ways reading the lyrics was kind of like a reality check for me. At the start of lockdown I’d become so obsessed with what people were thinking of me. I felt vulnerable and in ways exposed, so I tried to hide that by muting and changing myself. I felt like nothing I did was good or cool enough which was shit. Thankfully hindsight is an amazing thing, and after being able to hit somewhat of a reset button, I think I was able to appreciate the message this song holds, which, to me, is don’t waste your life pretending. I remember thinking, “damn, I can’t believe I nearly became like the person they’re singing about.”
This year has been met with many Radiohead covers, such as Lianne La Hava’s cover of “Weird Fishes,” Ben Gibbard’s cover of “Fake Plastic Trees” and Hayley Williams’ cover of the same song.
Watch the video for “High & Dry” below and hear a Bends-era Radiohead performance from the Paste archives further down. You can stream Carney’s version of The Bends here.
