Beck Covers The Flamingos I Only Have Eyes for You
Lately, Jason Bentley has been throwing this track into his sets every now and then and no matter how many times I hear it, it always stops me in my tracks.…
By Rachel Reynolds • • 1 min readJason Bentley has been throwing this track into his sets every now and then and no matter how many times I hear it, it always stops me in my tracks.
Every inch of the hopeless romantic in me wants to stop everything I’m doing, close my eyes, sway back and forth and BELIEVE.
That is the beautiful thing about soul music — it allows you to float in a bubble of bliss that excludes all the realities of a real relationship. For just a few minutes, stopped in time, with a bunch of shoo-wop-shoo-wops, you’re on top of the world slow dancing with the one you love as they gaze lovingly into your ideas. That’s how it makes ME feel any way.
It’s amazing to think that “I Only Have Eyes For You” was written in 1934, by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, though it was most famously recorded by The Flamingos in 1959.
Beck’s version appeared this month. It’s part of artist Doug Aitken’s installation “Song 1“, an exhibit at Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum which makes me want to plan a visit to the East Coast.
A bunch of folks recorded covers of the track for it, but I love Beck’s voice. Compare his with the original below.
RR