marissa nadler week: premiere of new carole king cover

Marissa Nadler
‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ [Carole King cover]

It has become something of a tradition that, every Valentines Day, Marissa Nadler will post a free download of a tragic lovelorn song or barbed commentary on the many pains of romantic entanglement (previous song titles include ‘Your Heart Is A Twisted Vine’ and ‘All Love Must Die’). That didn’t happen this year, sadly, as she was busy gearing up for the release of Little Hells, but she did post this message on her blog the day before: ”Working on a cover of ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ which Joni Mitchell once referred to as her favorite song. It’s a great song about a one night stand. Usually I don’t go near ladies, but for this one I’ll make an exception. Joni, however, is forever off limits (although if I didn’t think It would kill it for me, I would cover ‘Cactus Tree’, ‘Willy’, ‘Little Green’, ‘Case Of You’, ‘Blue’, ‘River’, ‘The Arrangement’, ‘Rainy Night House’………etc etc etc.)”

Written by Carole King and her ex-husband Gerry Goffin, ‘Will You [Still] Love Me Tomorrow’ was ranked at #125 in Rolling Stone’s poll of the 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time, and has been covered by everyone from Dusty Springfield to Amy Winehouse, via Cher, Shawn Colvin and, er, Minnie Driver. The first version was released in 1960 by The Shirelles; Carole herself didn’t release her version until 11 years later, on her influential masterpiece Tapestry. Joni Mitchell did backing vocals.

On this beautiful new cover, Marissa sticks faithfully to the original blueprint but ups the melancholy with her trademark ghostly vocals, delivering that famous refrain with soft sighs of abandonment to doubt. We’ve got an exclusive first listen for you below the cut. She does her own BVs, in case you were wondering.

Marissa Nadler, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’

[audio http://wearsthetrousers.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/willyoulovemetomorrow.mp3]

Written by: Alan Pedder

Tags: carole king, marissa nadler

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 12:29 pm and is filed under feature, special features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.