For her new Bjork cover of “All is Full of Love,” indie musician and singer Rosie Thomas enlisted an ‘indie’ all-star cast of guest vocalists for a virtual choir, including Sufjan Stevens, The Shins, Iron & Wine, Alexi Murdoch, Charily Theilen, Kanene Pipkin, William Fitzsimmons, Dawn Landes, and a bunch of others.
The cover track is off of the Lullabies For Parents Vol 1 EP, a “multimedia series of resources, entertainment, and encouragement for parents of all ages featuring music, podcast, videos, essays, assorted content and community that promotes finding common ground, connection, and comfort.”
The song is undeniably beautiful rolling through cycles of choir infusions. The problem is, however, that it is difficult to hear the full force of all of those voices as a listener would expect.
Nonetheless, and to be fair, unless you’re seeing the choir, or virtual choir, at the same time (like the famous Live Aid video from the 80s) then everyone’s voices pretty much get drown out, not to mention the music.
Perhaps one of the things that Quincy Jones did brilliantly with the song, and video, was to record them at the same time, in the studio. But even more than that, Jones realized the ‘drowning out’ effect and therefore had individual solos for a number of the top vocalists of the time – MJ, Bruce, Bono, Michael Stipe, etc.