"Oh, we're halfway there"

To commemorate The Pop Web's migration to its brand new domain (bookmark www.thepopweb.co.uk) we invited our twitter followers to suggest the first "Web-surfing" challenge in our new home. Mikeinlight didn't disappoint when he suggested this:

Bon Jovi to Sigur Ros. Good luck.

Well, Mike, we're pleased to announce that we've gone and cracked it. In spectacular fashion if we do say so ourself.

                                   
                        







Ch-ch-check it out after the jump.





Bon Jovi's lead singer Jon Bon Jovi has a fair number of strings to his bow. In addition to a woeful successful solo career, in 2002, he tried his hand at acting and joined the cast of Ally McBeal for their 5th season (aka the one they really shouldn't have bothered with because it was bloody awful) as Ally's love interest Victor. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Victor. That was his name. They really had just given up by that point hadn't they?

Anyway, part of the Ally McBeal success story was the emergence to relative prominence of resident "songstress" Vonda Shepard. The show's soundtrack albums were largely hit and miss affairs but nonetheless scored two top ten albums which gave Shepard a badly needed royalty check or two. Vonda wasn't alone on these albums however. When Tina Turner tried her hand at a "Cher" in 1999, she lent her comeback hit "When The Heartache Is Over" to the Ally McBeal soundtrack (this tenuously tied in to an amazing episode where Ally won the chance to be Tina's backing singer only for Tina to totally blank her when they met. It was pretty much downhill from there).

Rewind almost a decade to 1990 and you'll find Tina hamming it up with Rod Stewart on a cover of the Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston hit "It Takes Two", reaching number 5. 4 years later, Rod would get right back on that collaborating horse and narrowly miss out on a number one with "All For Love", which also featured Sting and Bryan Adams.



Whilst our favourite bit is undoubtedly the bit where Sting keeps repeating "I'm not wearing tights", Bryan Adams is the important man here. After the undoubted mega-hit that was "Everything I do" in 1991, Bryan really struggled to get things on track through the rest of the nineties, scoring the odd top ten hit, but not really lighting the charts or the music world on fire in anything even approaching the same way. It wasn't until someone came along and helped to resurrect his career at the beginning of the new millennium that Adams' stock began to rise once again.

And who were these saviours of the 80s/90s soft-rock balladeer? Enter Chicane.



"Don't Give Up" propelled Bryan Adams back to the top of the UK charts and paved the way for him to make the amazing "When You're Gone" duet with Mel C commercially viable. But we digress. Chicane provide the final link in our chain when, last year, they reworked Sigur Ros' biggest hit "Hoppipolla" into "Poppiholla" reaching number 7 in the process. This is the Sigur Ros' original video for said AMAZING song.



These, for our money provide a classic example of why cover versions can be a great thing. Chicane's version takes something which is fairly amazing in and of itself, and rather than letting that amazingness just carry them through to a lazy top 10 hit, actually reintrepret and rework the song to create something different bringing the music to a wider audience. Both versions can therefore sit side by side without one affecting or damaging the other. Sort of like Scissor Sisters' and Pink Floyd's versions of "Comfortably Numb" really.

Anyway, mikeinlight, there you have it. Bon Jovi to Sigur Ros. Once again, thepopweb wins.

Bon Jovi - Vonda Shepard - Tina Turner - Rod Stewart - Bryan Adams - Chicane - Sigur Ros

We want to take this opportunity to apologise for the flagrant omission of accents over the relevant vowels both in Sigur Ros and "Hoppipolla"."Sincere" apologies for any offence caused, natch.