The top 10 rock songs turned lounge songs, by the Lounge Kittens
[Photo by: Paul Harries]
Ever heard of the Lounge Kittens before?
If you haven’t, just imagine Richard Cheese fathering a trio of vivacious, colorful, talented ladies who effortlessly ooze sass.
Hailing from the British seaside town of Southampton, Jenny Deacon, Timia Gwendoline and Zan Lawther have been regulars on the U.K. live scene for the past few years. They’ve introduced Limp Bizkit onstage at a festival with an acapella rendition of “Rollin’,” supported sleaze-meisters Steel Panther on a 21-date tour and also covered some of our favorite rock and metal hits, many of which are accompanied by their very own weird and wonderful video.
Here are our top 10 favorites, for your aural and visual pleasure:
1. AC/DC – “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”
Zan: AC/DC: What song do you pick? Because they’re all bangers. Every single one is an anthem. I saw them in 2010 and they’re still in my top five gigs of all time—absolutely epic.
2. Aerosmith – “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing”
Timia: It’s the stalker’s anthem—you watch people while they’re sleeping? You freak! Imagine waking up and seeing somebody’s face like that. You should really go to sleep—you’ve been awake for days!
3. Alice Cooper – “Poison”
Zan: This was the first song that we ever sat down to arrange together. We got to meet Alice Cooper at London’s Stone Free Festival last year and his manager, the infamous Shep Gordon, came out and watched us sing probably the worst version of “Poison” that we’ve ever sung! We were so nervous.
4. Andrew W.K. – “Party Hard”
Zan: We shot this entire video in one day and there are seven different party scenes. Costumes changes, makeup changes. The end of the shoot was the UV rave scene, which we shot in my garage in November at 11 p.m. and it was absolutely freezing. We’d been shooting since 7 a.m.! Andrew W.K. has seen it.
5. Limp Bizkit – “Rollin’”
Zan: This was our first-ever video. I tweeted it to Fred Durst two days after it came out, in February 2014 and he retweeted it, saying, “Loving it.” Then all of a sudden, everything crashed! My phone started going mental because Fred posted it on all of the band’s social media channels. Then there were several months of chatting to Fred occasionally and him saying, “I really want to see you guys play,” and we were like, “Yeah, yeah, okay, that’s not going to happen, is it?” But Fred made it happen. We got to work with Limp Bizkit at Sonisphere Festival 2014—they got us up onstage to open their show.
6. Marilyn Manson – “The Beautiful People”
7. Slipknot – “Duality”
Zan: This is our most controversial video, not because of the content of the video, but because of Slipknot’s fans. They’re vehemently protective of their music. Slipknot liked it. Corey Taylor said, “I love your version—killer job!”
8. Steel Panther – “Gloryhole”
Jenny: We really wanted to do this well because we love Steel Panther so much. We released it just before we went on tour with them, so we had to make sure that we did it the best we could. Touring with them was so much fun.
9. System Of ADown – “Bounce”
Timia: This is my grandmother’s favorite track on the album. She has no idea what it’s about and no one’s ever going to tell her: It’s information she doesn’t need!
10. The Darkness – “Love Is Only A Feeling”
Zan: This was a very different video for us because we shot it at the end of last year and we felt super-fortunate to have achieved all of these wonderful things and with Christmas coming up, we just wanted to give something back. We don’t have a lot of money; we do everything on a budget and everything we earn as a band goes straight back into making more things. We found Shelter From The Storm, which is a London homeless charity who house people until they find permanent places to live, they help them with legal and help them get jobs. It wasn’t right to do a funny video for it, so we thought, we’re just going to give the video budget away to Shelter From The Storm and sing the song for people.