A song I like and someone who covered it.

One song I like would be May It Be by Enya

 

A person who did  a cover of this song is Hayley Westenra, someone who I only heard of recently

I’ve been listening to Enya for around 4 years now, but only started listening to Hayley Westenra around 2 or 3 weeks ago after I heard one of her songs playing on Pandora radio.  When I got the chance I decided to check out a few more of Hayley’s songs and found out that she did a cover of one of Enya’s and I had to listen to it.

            Between the two of them the main background music or the melody is basically the same.  It’s a calming, relaxing, slow tune that isn’t actually done with instruments for almost the entire song; it’s actually all done with their voices.  Hayley’s seems to add a small about of string near the last third or so of the song, but sound to me like only a single violin or so. to be quite honest the only place they differ even slightly is in the musical quality.  For example, the intensity of Enya’s version of the song is just a little lower than that of Hayley’s, and that is really one of the only ways they truly differ.  The Rhythm between the two versions is basically the same as I stated before.  The pitch of the two songs was low most of the time, but they both had different times when the pitch rose and fell.  The tempo of the songs was also basically the same, rather slow for both of the songs.  Even the Tibre is very similar between the two of them; the songs are rather simple, but can get complex from time to time because of small adjustments to the voices, maybe a bit of echo from time to time, and they also seem to layer different voice tracks throughout the song.  When two songs are as similar as this it may be difficult to choose one over the other, but for me it actually isn’t that difficult.

            Between the two of these I prefer Enya’s version.  One of the major reasons is simply because of nostalgia, I think people are more inclined to like something they’ve had for longer, and like I said, I’ve been listening to Enya for about 4 years.  The major reason I think I prefer Enya’s version would have to be the intensity, like I said in the previous paragraph, Enya’s sound is just a bit lower that Hayley’s, it’s just noticeable enough to make a difference to me.  One might think that such a small difference wouldn’t make a difference, but to me Enya’s seem so much more relaxing and softer than Hayley’s, which while relaxing ,lacks a certain charm that Enya’s has.  The strangest thing for me is that even though Hayley’s appears to add a small bit of instrumentation to the song, which includes what sounds like one of my favorite instruments, the violin, I still prefer Enya’s more simplified, almost entirely vocal version. The last reason I like Enya more is could only be called a personal preference, and that is I just like the sound of her voice more that I like Hayley’s, like the rest of the song, I just find it more relaxing.