Why Troye Sivan Covering George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ Feels So Weird
Mainstream music can be painfully predictable, but sometimes the unexpected is even worse. Troye Sivan covered George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” for the television series The Idol. Words cannot express how wrong a choice this was. While the original “My Sweet Lord” has a reputation for being a classic, John Lennon seemed to dismiss it.
George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ didn’t need a synthesizer revamp from Troye Sivan
As a musician, George was many things. Spiritual. Folky. Philosophical. “My Sweet Lord”‘s gentle guitar rhythm and lyrics about God perfectly encapsulate his work.
Sivan is none of those things. While he tried for some Lorde-esque youthful wisdom on his first album, the rest of his music is squarely aimed at the club. And that’s fine. But having him cover “My Sweet Lord” is like asking one of those risque DeviantArtists to remake the Mona Lisa. Whatever the result, it’ll probably be bad — and definitely be too awkward to be fun.
‘My Sweet Lord’ needs vocals that Troye Sivan did not provide
George’s warm, inviting vocals on the original are replaced with stilted sing-talking. Sivan doesn’t sound like he’s singing about the Lord. He sounds like he’s singing about meaningless club sex (yet again) and the stale synthesizer beat doesn’t help.
It’s not that spirituality and sexuality can’t co-exist in music (see Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love,” Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” or Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”). But all of those songs exude a desire for transcendence, be it sensual or religious. Sivan sings “My Sweet Lord” like he’s a sex robot, and an unenthusiastic one at that.
What John Lennon said about George Harrison plagiarizing the song
During a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John seemed to dismiss the spiritual elements of “My Sweet Lord.” John commented on the alleged similarities between George’s “My Sweet Lord” and The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine.” “He must have known, you know,” he said. “He’s smarter than that. It’s irrelevant, actually — only on a monetary level does it matter.
“In the early years, I’d often carry around someone else’s song in my head, and only when I’d put it down on tape — because I can’t write music — would I consciously change it to my own melody because I knew that otherwise somebody would sue me,” John added. “George could have changed a few bars in that song and nobody could have ever touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off.”
Regardless, John didn’t want to seem too critical of George. “It’s not important, anyway,” he said. “I don’t feel that or anything only about him or any of them. It’s very complicated and there are a lot of mixed emotions about all of them. That’s why it’s difficult to say anything. I don’t want to come off niggling. It’s stupid inasmuch as the repercussions are not worth some sort of offhand remarks about each other.”
Regardless of what George was thinking when he wrote “My Sweet Lord,” the tune is an awkward fit for Sivan.
