Tame Impala recently pulled off a respectable feat: a cover of Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” that’s faithful to the original with textured, harmonized vocals and a sense of wonder in frontman Kevin Parker’s voice. Parker’s guitar strumming, however, was a welcome reminder that yes, this is Tame Impala given the song’s extra-dreamlike quality.
The only real point of departure from the original comes when Parker sings, “All I want’s a fucking kiss from a rose,” around the 2:38 mark, a diversion he greets with a smirk. Luckily nobody, including the Australian radio station Triple J for whom they recorded the song, objected to the expletive. The band recorded the cover for Triple J’s “Like a Version” series.
In an interview with Triple J, Parker called the song, which originally appeared on the Batman Forever soundtrack, “a childhood favorite” and reminisced about watching the movie in the theater. The soundtrack in particular left a mark on Parker. “It was the first CD I bought,” he said. “So I knew every song on it. I used to listen to it back to back.”
But despite his fandom, choosing to cover Seal’s contribution to the soundtrack wasn’t easy, since Parker and his bandmates thought it might be too hard. “Once we accepted that none of us sound like Seal — like, none of us have the insane voice that he does, once we were content with, ‘Oh, it’s us, it’s a bunch of Aussie blokes doing it’ — then I think we were at peace with it. We’re gonna do the best we can.”
The band also recorded a new version of their own “Dracula,” off their Deadbeat album, which came out last year.
Parker recently discussed his musical inspirations in an interview with Blackpink’s Jennie for Rolling Stone’s Musicians on Musicians series. When Parker asked her what her favorite duet was, she named the remix of “Dracula” she recorded, but then thought of another: “I don’t know why, I’m thinking Madonna and Justin Timberlake right now, ‘4 Minutes,’” she said. “There’s so many.”
“Does Fleetwood Mac count, I wonder?” Parker said. “Because they were singing duet most of the time. I love Fleetwood Mac, if you can’t tell.”
