Category Archives: Barenaked Ladies Songs

Barenaked Ladies covers: Acoustic cover songs – music videos by the songwriters of the Laptop Sessions video blog. Daily music blog with new indie rock acoustic songs.

“Green Christmas” (Acoustic Christmas Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Well, tonight’s going to be a brief one, and I apologize.  But I made up for it by calling in the big guns — aka one Jim Fusco for additional guitar stylings and harmony vocals — to make this video one my favorites that I’ve done.  It’s certainly the best Christmas video that I’ve recorded.  We had a lot of fun playing it, and I think that comes through on the recording.

I hope you enjoy it!

Oh, yeah, I should probably mention what song it is.  This is “Green Christmas,” one of the holiday originals on the Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked For the Holidays album.  Second only to “Elf’s Lament” and maybe “Christmastime (Oh Yeah),” this is one of my favorite original tracks on the album.  There’s just the right mix of humor and seriousness on this record, and I think this one leans more toward the serious side.  I especially like the middle part — “Green, cause of everything I miss.  All this missletoe, no kiss…”

Simply put, this was a lot of fun to record.

And it’s certainly not like we haven’t played it before.  It’s been a while, but this song is officially part of our MoU Christmas Chord Book, Part II.  That’s right, we needed multiple chord books to contain the number of songs we learned for our Christmas shows.

The reason this post is so brief is that I remembered and recorded my video much later than I would have liked, and then, Jim and I watched the SNL “Best of Christmas Past” DVD while wrapping our gifts for Christmas.  It felt good to accomplish that while simultaneously watching some great skits — the Matt Foley “motivational speaker” Santa, Alec Baldwin’s “Shvety balls,” Eddie Murphy’s “Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood, and boy does the list go on… — and laughing (a lot!) together.

And, now, it will feel good to sleep…

See you next session!

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“New Kid On The Block” (Barenaked Ladies Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Hey HEY!  Welcome to your, as Jeff put it, Fantastic Friday edition of the Laptop Sessions here with me, Jim Fusco!  Glad to be here today, but I’ve been incredibly sick the past few days.  I have the worst head cold…  I’ve already lost two nights’ sleep to it.  I was actually saving this video because we Mike did a BNL song recently, but I put this one first because I’m not sure how well I’ll be by Monday when we’ll be doing “New Bands Week” here.  I have a new band video already recorded and ready to go, so I bought myself until Thursday when I have to record another video.  I can only assume I’ll be better by then!  Actually, I have literally sixteen or seventeen songs ready to record.  I’ve been practicing like mad over the past month and these videos, once recorded, will provide me with almost two full months worth of videos.  In that pool of songs, there’s also TEN new bands!  So, I’m working hard every day to bring fresh viewers to the music video blog and to keep all the regular viewers excited.

Today, I bring you a song that I really love called “New Kid On The Block”.  What perfect timing, too, as the “classic” early 90s band “New Kids on the Block” is in the middle of their “anticipated” reunion.  They have a new album out and everything.  This song is literally about being a member of the band.  Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies wrote this song for their first album, “Gordon”.  What a great satire.  At the time (1992), the New Kids were both “new” and “kids”…well, not really, as you’ll hear in the lyrics of the song.  But, they were popular, nonetheless, and Page must’ve thought it would be funny to write a song from the point of view of one of the band members.

Some of my favorite all-time BNL lines are in this song, including “Well we may not write the songs we sing, but look at Elvis, he sold his soul and you crowned him King.”  The New Kids are pretty much everything I hate in a band, and BNL is truly everything I love in a band.  That’s why this song is just about perfect in my eyes.

One of the other parts of the song I love is at the end with the inclusion of a few New Kids on the Block songs.  I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to incorporate those parts into my solo acoustic cover version here, and all on the first try!

Enjoy the video — recorded just before New Bands Week here on the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover and original songs music video blog!



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“Maybe Katie” (Barenaked Ladies Cover)

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Welcome to your Terrific Tuesday edition of the Laptop Sessions!  Tonight, I’m the first person to post using our brand new WordPress 2.6.1 version of the blog.  Of course, on your end, you shouldn’t see any difference, but on our end, the difference is vast…and great.  For one thing, our visual editor won’t mess with our code anymore, so we’ll be able to post chords to our cover songs more often than before.

Okay, on to tonight’s video.  Tonight is a classic one in terms of my live performances.  The “band” of Chris, Jim, and Becky (see Chris’ post a few days ago) was formed in 2004 and we loved to sing this Barenaked Ladies song, “Maybe Katie” in concert.  Then, we didn’t realize we were singing it in the wrong key- a half step below the original key.  Rest assured that for this video, we fixed the error, as all the Laptop Sessions songs are always in the original key- the ONLY way it should be!  Listen up, cover song musicians on YouTube and elsewhere: YOU REALLY STINK IF YOU DO IT IN THE WRONG KEY!!!  There’s no exception to this- if it’s out of your range and you change the key, then you don’t deserve to do the song.  I sang “Baby Please Come Home” by Darlene Love at our Christmas party in the original key and that song is ridiculously high.  You didn’t see me take the easy way out.  And this is why our motto is “Putting an end to bad YouTube covers FOREVER!”  Wow, the tangents tonight…

Moving on, this song is off of one of my favorite albums, “Everything To Everyone”.  I do believe that it’s probably their fourth best album behind “Gordon”, “Barenaked Ladies Are Men” (the almost 30-track version), and “Maroon”.  This album has some input from the other band members, which if you’ve read some of my past rants, means a lot to me in a band.

We do “Maybe Katie” a bit differently than the album’s version in the sense that the BNL version has some heavy electric guitars on the chorus and middle sections.  Our version is completely acoustic and has more of a “folk” feel to it.  That’s what happens when you don’t have a drummer handy…that isn’t already reserved to play the solo like I am.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s Laptop Session.  Thanks again!

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“These Apples” (Barenaked Ladies Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to another edition of The Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!

Of course, The Laptop Sessions started partially because I loved Ed Robertson’s “Bathroom Sessions” so much. He’s so great on the guitar, it makes me feel very inferior.

But, I still love his music and I love to play it! This song, “These Apples”, is infectious and I was so happy I finally got a chance to play it.

Next week, we’ll be doing “Title Track Week”, but this week is anything-goes! Check out the archive for more great Sessions from Chris and check out the Blog at https://guitarbucketlist.com for Jeff’s most recent video, as well!

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