Mark Ronson feat. Alex Greenwald – Just (Cover Version Of The Radiohead Song)

New York hip-hop DJ & producer Mark Ronson turns Radiohead’s indie classic Just into a 21st Century nu-jazz smash…

The song Just by Radiohead has got to be one of the best rock tunes of the 1990s. It was from their best album, The Bends, and had one of their best videos (see bottom of this post). And I’ve been meaning to write about Mark Ronson’s excellent cover version for quite a while now, which has a pretty excellent video of it’s own.

It’s taken from an album of Radiohead covers called Exit Music: Songs For Radio Heads and is far and away the best track on the album. Out go the raging guitars and thundering drums of the original; in come a broken hip-hop beat and wailing horns. It’s like the song has been put through a blender with some OutKast & James Brown.

The producer of this excellent cover, Mark Ronson, is an ultra-hip British born but New York based DJ who had another hit last year with the fantastic party track Ooh Wee (featuring Ghost Face of the Wu Tang Clan). He is not, as some early reports said, the son of legendary guitarist for David Bowie, Mick Ronson (although bizarrely enough he is the son of one of Foreigner, which is almost as strange as Alvin Stardust’s son being drum & bass DJ Adam F). He is however very, very good. And he also just produced the debut album by Lily “daughter of Keith” Allen.

This would be one of my top tracks of the year anyway, but as a Radiohead cover which makes you want to get up and dance, rather than lie in a darkened room, Mark Ronson’s version of Just is at the very top of my chart of 2006 already.

I bought the album Exit Music: Songs For Radio Heads on eMusic, but iTunes has since caught up (always behind the times though) and you can now download the MP3 of Just by Mark Ronson there.

But if you just want to listen to this version of Just, you can do that here:

Mark Ronson feat. Alex Greenwald – Just

And whilst you’re at it, why not have a butcher’s at the video to Radiohead’s original version of Just. What is the guy afraid to say?!

UPDATE: The video above is the one made for Just by Mark Ronson before he put the track on his solo album and became a huge star; they’ve now created a new video which is  a homage to the original Radiohead one, and worth checking out.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *