Trevor Horn, the British musician and producer known for his work with the Buggles and Art of Noise, has released the new album Echoes – Ancient & Modern (via Deutsche Grammophon). Included on the album is a cover of Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City single “Swimming Pools (Drank),” sung by Tori Amos. Listen to the new song below.
Horn discussed “Swimming Pools (Drank)” with the British rock journalist and critic Paul Morley in the liner notes for Echoes – Ancient & Modern. “I thought of it as a kind of literate, modern American standard, a rap song open to reinterpretation,” Horn said. “I wanted something distinctly 21st-century with original, eloquent lyrics, and my longtime engineer Tim Weidner suggested this. Tori Amos took the idea of adapting Kendrick Lamar’s psyched-up swagger in her stride and made it intensely cinematic. I listened to numerous other rap songs but nothing seemed as smart and funny. And it sets everything up like it’s the beginning of a song cycle.”
Elsewhere on Echoes – Ancient & Modern, Horn and his guests cover tracks by Depeche Mode (“Personal Jesus”), Nirvana (“Smells Like Teen Spirit”), Roxy Music (“Avalon”), Billy Idol (“White Wedding”), and others. The new album follows 2019’s Trevor Horn Reimagines the Eighties.
Tori Amos released Ocean to Ocean in 2021. Read the feature “Tori Amos on the Music That Shaped Her Life.”
