Janelle Monae is on a covers tear. A few weeks ago she offered a fresh spin on the Robert Palmer ’80s jam “Simply Irresistible,” and today Monae goes back a few years further with this sparkling rendition of David Bowie’s 1977 classic, “Heroes.”
We could be “Heroes,” just for Monae.
The cover is part of Pepsi’s “Beats of the Beautiful Game” and “Now Is What You Make It” campaigns, which celebrate the upcoming 2014 World Cup tournament in Brazil.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Monae gushed about the influence Bowie has had on her career.
“Bowie is part of my musical DNA in so many ways,” Monae says to the mag. “And ‘Heroes’ is one of my favorite Bowie songs. When you love your favorite song, you want to keep some of the beautiful qualities of the original, but we brought Atlanta in the drums and wanted them to be thick and hit hard. [The cover] is like us reimagining it. I thought, ‘If this song was in my dream, how would it get from our dream to my reality?’”
Well done — it’s certainly better than that Wallflowers cover from the god-awful ’90s Godzilla movie. The Duke would be proud.
Check it out below.