Once upon a time Jay-Z and Alicia Keys had a hit with 'Empire State Of Mind'. Then Keys decided she could do it better without that man shouting all over it and had her own hit with the imaginatively titled 'Empire State Of Mind (Part II)'. Now Paloma Faith, in a similarly US-state-themed-ditty scenario, has decided that her single 'New York' should be re-released, but this time with added man-shouting-all-over-it in the guise of Ghostface Killah (sic). We really liked the original. It peaked at 15 in the UK charts, which wasn't really proportionate to the quality of the song if we're being honest, but does it merit a re-release? Here's the version with the additional 21 seconds of Mr Killah:
Paloma Faith & Ghostface Killah 'New York':
Now the problem with this is that it's lazy. "Here's your cheque Mr Killah, if you could just pop in there for 5 minutes and shout something over this old song that would be great." Does anyone really believe Faith and Killah were ever in the same room together? Do you think they've even met? In fact, do they even know who each other are?!
This sort of attitude towards music buyers really makes us angry (we're angry a lot this week). It would have been far better, braver, and have shown faith in the song, if they'd done a straight re-release. "Here's a song we put out once before. Maybe we didn't market it properly, maybe it was the wrong time of year, but we really believe in it, think it should have done better and we're giving it another chance" kind of thing. This is another case of the industry treating us like idiots. It's a shame because we'd have liked this to be a hit. Maybe it will be. If it is we'll eat our hat and come back to this post and add a rapper to it.
Let's listen to something that will cheer us up. Here's the Starsmith remix from the original release. We're off to buy 6,000 downloads of the album version.
Paloma Faith (without that silly Ghostface man) 'New York' Starsmith Remix:
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