Black Marble covers Robert Palmer‘s “Johnny and Mary.” The track is from Chris Stewart‘s upcoming EP of covers “I Must Be Living Twice,” due out August 14th on Sacred Bones Records. Following up on his cover of Wire’s “In Manchester” in early July, here Stewart chooses a cut from Palmer’s “early more bedroomy synth stuff” before he got really big.
“I Must Be Living Twice” was recorded shortly after Black Marble’s 2019 LP Bigger Than Life (Sacred Bones) as a way “to come down from the process of writing and recording” the full-length. Earlier this month the musician confessed to loving “the cover song aspect of live performance,” explaining that he found it a great way to open dialogue with fans while sharing some of the music he was inspired by.
Acknowledging Robert Palmers “slightly garish” image as a “1980s’ pop icon,” never-the-less Stewart explains:
“It’s not hard to find this old song kind of enchanting and more accessible than his ‘Addicted to Love’ era stuff, all relevancy subtext aside. And since the themes of the song deal with someone who’s undergoing sort of a career crisis, ‘scared that he’ll be caught, without a second thought,’ I thought it would be interesting to cover in the context of who he was and what he (and artists more broadly) often go through. It also felt nice to give some props to an early tune, focusing on a time in his ascent before a lot of inevitable complications.”
