Hey what's up I'm Ruel and I covered Lenny
Kravitz's It Ain't Over Till It's Over on Like A Version.
So many tears I've cried... I had a huge shortlist that I've been building and
building and building for a Like A Version potential songs and I was like what would
be perfect for like right now like what the people want to hear like what would be fun to perform
or change the arrangement to and I had like a bunch of Radiohead songs and Beatles songs and
this Jeff Buckley song that I was kind of all had in my head and then this one we kind of had an
idea for the arrangement only like a few days ago and we're like all right we got to do this one.
My dad played the song to me a few years ago and I was in the car and I was
just talking about how I really liked these certain chord progressions and
it was like there's Tyler The Creator song I was showing him and he was like oh it kind of sounds
like this Lenny Kravitz song It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over and I was like oh what's that?
He played it and I was just like hooked I couldn't stop listening to it.
His voice is so it's got such a wide range of a really hectic gravel raspy like belt
and then just goes so soft into his falsetto and I think he can switch between them so well and so
uniquely really. That was such a challenge to sing this song because I'm not used to singing up there
that much and talking to my MD saying you know that I wanted to change the chords and try and
make it as different as possible but still paying homage and so then Beau my MD came back to me
about 10 minutes later and kind of just mapped out the chords and put all these drum patterns
and I was like yeah this is exactly what we want and then went to rehearsal and then met the horns
players and they you know just started playing some of the guitar licks in Lenny's solo in the
song and they were kind of harmonising on that together and that sounded amazing so we just kept
that in and then my guitar player had the idea of the BG's melody in Lenny's solo there's this one
melody that he does that sounds exactly the same and yeah so we just put that in and we just kept
putting stuff in until it like until we stopped and we're like okay that's enough like this is
this is good and yeah I'm really happy with how it ended up. I don't usually
play the piano at all I thought it'd be a cool time to kind of bring it out because
I only really started playing at the start covid. I've just been noodling around for the
past few months I was like why not just bring a bit of that into it never performed live
on keys before so it brought it in kept it pretty simple but it was nice and dramatic.
I'm so used to just singing sad songs and I listen to a lot more sad songs and I do happy songs. I
always just gravitate towards like what brings the most emotion out of me. This song was unique to me
just because it's such a positive happy vibey song that I still really connected to and feel
a lot of emotion while i'm singing. It was still fun to kind of explore that kind of funky falsetto
and like the sort of big cinematic breaks and the melodies and the lyrics I just would never really
sing about so yeah it was definitely fun to branch out but still you know try to keep it me in like
the way that kind of the chords are arranged or like the the instruments used and stuff like that.
Last time i was doing Like A Version I was 14
and I was doing Weathered by Jack Garrett and I was actually with M-Phazes.
That was the first time that I showed my face on camera like anywhere as you know an artist
so it was like a very monumental moment for me in my life really. I'm happy that
that kind of started everything and got a bit of traction and it kind of got my career
going and now I'm back and it's it's feeling good I feel a lot more relaxed than I was before.
For the first half I definitely was just thinking about the lyrics because I wasn't too familiar a
few days ago I've always known the song but I've never really thought about the lyrics and then
kind of as soon as it hits the first chorus you kind of really get into it and then the second
verse is just heaps of fun to sing so definitely by halfway I'm just kind of in autopilot.
It's a happy song but with like a sense of like longing and like don't
don't give up on me yet like there's a bit of angst into it still I don't
know it's just a good vibe it's a really pretty song you know despite how kind of
rough we made it or rocky we made it so yeah I don't know take whatever you feel.
In the past year I guess I did some shows at the start of the year Lane Way and did like a
few little live streams of course as everyone was doing. Yeah I love doing stuff like this
I love doing these like kind of live in the room sort of things where there's no crowd it
definitely takes the pressure off but I do miss the old the old crowd engagement sort of stuff.
Like A Version means a lot to me it's such an iconic thing in Australia it's such a privilege
to be able to do it so yeah obviously it was like the first thing that brought me brought me into
the scene so yeah I'm so honoured to be able to do it again and I really wanted to to make it count.