“We’re often trying to sound like Prince”: Jermaine Clement’s favourite songs
Most of what made the New Zealand comedy duo of Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, and their fantastic Flight of the Conchords work so well was their music. Underneath all the humour and jokes was some real musical talent, and some genuinely good songs. Songs filled with memorable melodies and lyrics that you’d alternately want to laugh along to and sing along with (“How come we’re at a fork in the road, and yet it cuts like a knife?”).
And something else that makes the Clement and McKenzie duo stand out from other musical comedy acts is the variety of sounds and styles that they toy around with. Whether it’s the singer-songwriter meets doo-wop mashup of ‘If You’re Into It’, the Eminem-esque ‘Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros’, the early 2000s inspired power-ballad ‘I’m Not Crying’, or maybe the best of the lot, the seventies inflected sexy slow-jam of ‘The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)’ and funk-infused come-on ‘Business Time’, there is so much variety in the songs that the Flight of the Conchords sing.
And so, with all that in mind, it makes sense that the musical duo have pretty strong, and naturally varied, taste in music themselves. McKenzie recently revealed that he counted Leonard Cohen’s classic ‘Tower of Song’ among his favourite tracks (which makes sense, for all the perceptions of Cohen as a maudlin and depressing writer, he was a deeply funny, humorous lyricist as well, as evidenced so well in this song itself), as well as things like ‘Peg’ by Steely Dan, ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ by Ray Charles, Harry Nilsson’s cover of Randy Newman’s ‘Sail Away’ and Nina Simone’s cover of The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’.
Jermaine Clement had previously discussed his favourite songs in a guest DJ spot with the Los Angeles-based KCRW radio station. The first song he played and spoke about was Kate Bush’s timeless, ethereal debut ‘Wuthering Heights’.
Explaining the decision to open with this song, Clement said that he “thought I would start with fear”, explaining that the song invoked eerie memories of his childhood whenever he heard it. “I lived in a house in the country, with big trees outside of my window. I can’t remember if they scraped on my window, but the combination of this song and the trees, this song had a big effect on me. I knew that she was speaking as a ghost. She wants to drag him into death, that’s what she’s talking about. She’s asking him to go with her into death. That’s terrifying.”
Next up, Clement spoke about Supertramp’s ‘The Logical Song’, and then moved on to an artist who also appears among his comedy partners’ favourites, Harry Nilsson, but one that veers far more into the absurd and comical realm of the Conchords than ‘Sail Away’. “What I like about the ‘Coconut’ song,” Clement says, “is [that] it says that any problem can be solved by putting a lime in a coconut and drinking it all up”.
And while he doesn’t make any direct connection with Harry Nilsson and Flight of the Conchords, he does so with his next pick, Prince: “He’s a big influence on us. We’re often trying to sound like Prince and failing, but failing enough that sometimes people don’t realise that that’s what we’re trying to do, and they think that’s just our general sound. But I think a lot of bands are doing that, you know. They try to make one thing, and their own personality or style turns it into something else. That’s quite often for us, we’re [trying] to be Prince.”
Jermaine Clement’s favourite songs:
- Kate Bush – ‘Wuthering Heights’
- Supertramp – ‘The Logical Song’
- Harry Nilsson – ‘Coconut’
- Prince – ‘Housequake’
- Beck – ‘Debra’
