Talk lyrics were changed the last minute. (Proof Inside)

[nowayme]

Hey everyone.

 

We all know that Talk early on supposed to have completely different lyrics by the demo that floats around the internet.

We all also know that some remixes (Junkie XL and Dave Aude) of the actual track contain some slightly different lyrics to the track.

 

What we don't know is that those lyrics ALMOST made it to the final release of X&Y Album and they were replaced -literally- last minute.

 

How do I know that?

Well while I was trying to recreate that version over here ( https://coldplaying.com/forum/index.php?threads/talk-pre-relase-lyrics-version.110810/ ) I noticed something very odd on the spectral analysis of the song.

The parts where the new lyrics are ("In the future where would I be" instead of "or swim a river out to the sea" and the new re-arranged bridge with the "when you worry about the future and the 3rd world war") their upper high end of frequencies cut on a different place than the rest of the song. This translates into a very bad rough cut and paste job done on the studio, most possibly even after that actual album was mastered. So what I'm saying here is what you hear on the album is badly cut and paste job that was done the last minute. Once you actually track where the cut parts are you can actually even hear that it's slightly off. (Sorry if I ruined anybody's experience of listening the song!)

 

Here's a graphical explanation of what I mean:

[I ran away]

Wow, very interesting find !

I must say I just relistened to the album track and could not pick up the cutting by ear even though I know where it is supposed to be.

As someone who isn't into remixes I had never even heard that line about the third world war - I'm glad they didn't include it, it does sound a bit cheesy imho. The "swim a river out to the sea" line I had so far only heard in live performances of Talk during the Viva Era.

One thing confuses me however - I always read that the leaked, alternative version of Talk was actually recorded after the version we know now, and that the band in the end decided to put the original version on the album. Hmm...

[nowayme]

I can definitely tell you that this is not the true. It is confirmed by the fact that the commissioned remixers got the tools of the song prior to the release of the track/album. Obviously the tools sent to them contained earlier vocal takes of the track as evidenced in all mixes more specifically:

 

Ulrich Schnauss - Contains vocals from the very early version of the song with the completely different verses, plus the final vocals and some alternate takes of the used lyrics.

Dave Aude/Junkie XL - Uses the exact vocal takes as the one on the version I posted, mostly the same thing as the original but some lyrics are changed/switched place. Most possibly indicates the most close version to the final at the point the promoter/manager sent the tools to them.

François Kevorkian - Uses the alternate takes that got cut, some shared with other mixes of the bunch.

Stuart Price/Thin White Duke - That's a clever one, uses mostly the used vocal takes, except from the bridge which is identical to Dave Aude/Junkie XL ones, plus it uses an alternate take with different notation on "be" from "in the future where will I be" indicating that they played with that lyric before they got it into what we got on the final version, and also there's a vocoder saying "talk to me" which indicates another unused lyric somewhere in the bunch of the vocal takes. I am very sure that Stuart Price actually did his job and heard closely the actual lyrics of the X&Y released version and he tried to get as many as possible in from what was given to him (compared to Junkie XL/Dave Aude that most possibly copy-pasted a whole take as is) but I guess the bridge was absent at that point.

 

I have a feeling that remixers got just a bunch of vocal takes, older and newer, that had little information to what got used and what not and they did a guesswork, some of them went the safe road (Junkie XL/Dave Aude/Stuart Price) and used based on (I guess) filename criteria to what are the actual vocals that got used and some went with the more creative, more open road and used whatever they felt like using (François Kevorkian/Ulrich Schnauss).

[coldplaykb]

Nice find! This is really interesting and I never heard some of those remixes before. I absolutely love the Ulrich Schnauss one, and I'm going to check out your other version now!

[nowayme]

Well for the sake of this thread and people discovering now these remixes, here's a full list of officially commissioned remixes:

 

Thin White Duke Remix Radio Edit

Thin White Duke Remix

Dave Aude Club Mix

Dave Aude Dub

Dave Aude Radio Edit

Dave Aude Radio Edit (Short)

Dave Aude Remix Edit

Junkie XL Radio Edit

Junkie XL Vox

Junkie XL Dub

Ulrich Schnauss Remix

François Kevorkian Dub

[coldplaykb]

Nice, I'll check all those out!

 

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