ELO re-worked! VOICEPLAY - MR. BLUE SKY | classical musician reacts & analyses

[@SirHairless]

Check out some classical chaos next kzbin.info/www/bejne/j5bWm3SXa6pgo9E

[@DravenGal]

Somewhat ironically, every time I hear "Blue Skies," I think of "White Christmas" (and having one would suggest gray skies and snow-laden clouds). The movie, I mean, not the song. I love the little snippet of Bing and Danny singing "Blue Skies." I watch that movie every year, on Christmas Day!💙

[@marshayoung9387]

You are amazing & I thank you for another great reaction to Voice Play. Geoff just released a new solo cover today called ..Big Iron..It is his best ever. Please do a reaction video to it.

[@lindakennamer2850]

@@SirHairless I definitely didn’t miss that! However, since you so kindly offered the link, I think I will do it again! I like listening to music first, then your analysis, then music again. It’s amazing how mush more I hear after you have drawn my attention to key parts. There are times however when l hear it first on your channel and then listen after. I think I retain what I have learned better with the three step process, but I wonder how others like to do it. I admit to being a musical novice. Does it vary by musical knowledge?

[@MarieDesJardin]

Love you pointing out how well Layne and Geoff work together. I can really hear it on their live ACA Top Ten songs, which they perform live in one take. They jump in perfectly synchronized as the songs change. The benefit, I guess, of singing together since high school

[@Broomrider1492]

This is so fun to clap alone too. Dancing in my chair. Hard to believe it's been four years since Earl left the group.

[@katthor7311]

This is my go-to VP song when I want to be in a good mood. It's so fantastic. In 2019 VP was still touring and they didn't do a lot of videos; just every now and then when they had a moment. That's part of why the video is so simple. Simple yet effective. 😁 I don't know if you watched all the way to the end on your own, but this was part of their Partwork series. They provided the sheet music for the arrangements from this series for free for anyone who wanted to sing it with their own group. I would love for you to check out one of their ACA Top 10 videos...the ones where Geoff and Layne are in front of mics. Those are live and they do the recording in one take. I would love to hear/see your reaction to their voices with no post-editing effects on them.

[@thisismetoday7423]

Which ACA 10 is your favorite?

[@katthor7311]

@@thisismetoday7423 I really like Old School Rap, Disney villains, and Broadway.

[@thisismetoday7423]

@@katthor7311 Ok, thanks! I’m planning to use my Patreon request for one so he can see them perform live but I’ve had a hard time picking. I really like the Sitcom theme one but a lot of people have said Villains is their favorite so I may go with that one. 😄

[@katthor7311]

@@thisismetoday7423 oh nice!

[@judithboulden3456]

I ❤ when Geoff plays the air bass. It helps us stick to that beautiful bass line. 🎼 no bass clef in my phone emojis

[@daletimberlake8109]

And, your reaction got me in a good mood for a Saturday morning here in the states! First reaction I've ever watched of this Voiceplay release and what a great breakdown...always love how you're able to dissect the individual parts. I had no idea of the song switch to Blue Skies until you pointed it out. And, yeah Earl has such a distinctive voice, you can pick his part out anywhere. And, J. None is just so smooth whenever he opens his mouth...and always has a smile on his face. Love Geoff's "air bass". Just another masterful Sir Hairless reaction to put me in a good mood for the day!!

[@EtherealForever]

Love to see you smiling! That's why I love VP - they lift the spirits 😉. As per usual, learnt a ton too - thank you! 🌹🕊

[@wenglishsal]

Awesome re-working of a FANTASTIC original, bravo VOICEPLAY.. I loved it. But I still, at the age I am, I still have a soft spot for Jeff Lynne's one.. ELO are amazing and I have loved their works, since I was in my late teens.. Another fantastic analysis, Sir H, sending you my heartiest best wishes to you from Wales.

[@ilonadever8249]

This is one of my gazillion favorite Voiceplay pieces! They did Any Way You Want It at about the same time period, also a happy, feel good cover. And I'll second watching their Queen in 5 Minutes medley.

[@karenponchak5304]

It was done using the same set (but different costuming)

[@yoclark2723]

I was a young mom when I first heard ELO. I loved them so much! Voiceplay really did this song justice. Earl sure does have a unique voice. It's so different from Mitch yet they both can sing the same high notes. Thanks for featuring it.

[@sudelaine8653]

I'm surely one of the very few here who is unfamiliar with the ELO original but know Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" by heart. Since I discovered VoicePlay about 2-3 years ago, I've been yearning for them to cover the "Great American Songbook", as it's known: songs by Berlin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen, Rodgers and Hart/Hammerstein and the rest of the greats. Pardon my snob-ism when I say that those songs are, on average, much superior to the average songs of the next generations of pop songwriters, in both melody and lyrics. Sometimes I'm glad to be an old lady; I was raised on fine music! I hope to hear more of it by today's talented artists, like VoicePlay.

[@Juliana_Livingston]

oh my goodness! I love ELO!!! I actually hadn’t seen this one by VP! 😮 it was a brilliant arrangement. Thank you for your reaction and analysis! You seemed to have a lot of fun with this one 😁 👏🏻

[@SirHairless]

I did indeed! Glad I could help you with this new ELO x VP discovery

[@karingreen396]

What a celebration to end the workweek. Thank you! I would love to see a reaction to the Wicked Medley

[@johnhelwig8745]

Thank you. I enjoyed that. You are the first music reaction channel I've seen of this song. Very few reactions have been done on Voiceplay's "Mr Blue Sky"... and that's too bad. It is a great cover and one of my favorites.

[@rdy3357]

Love your appreciation of the arrangements by both Geoff and Layne. This is part of their Partwork series (Patreon requested songs), and they made the charts available from a link in the video description.

[@SimiusAtheus]

Sir Hairless, another great reaction and analysis. You never disappoint. Thanks.

[@alisonwebre1]

Left me educated and smiling.

[@cherylclosson893]

Thank you, ELO is one of my favorites from my youth❣️

[@The-Sneaky-Vampire]

Earl's voice is a sound laser. Very unique and really beautiful. If memory serves, he left the group because he was having some health and personal struggles in his life. I do miss his lofty tenor. I would love to get your R&A on VP's cover of True Colors. Same line-up as this one. It is STUNNING. The harmonies are just...*chef's kiss.* And you get to hear Layne sing solo bits as there's no beat boxing. The song is 3 and a half minutes of a vocal loving embrace.

[@SirHairless]

A laser. The perfect description

[@venetta-sh7su]

So good! Watched it earlier and again now and I'm still smiling! 😁 Excellent arrangement and performance by VP and such fun analysis and the claps👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 and the incorporated Frank Sinatra song - so clever!!! Thank you SH for putting that smile on my face! ❤💫🙏

[@huldradraco]

yes, that part where you wondered if it was added in post, that was heavy autotune on their voices to create that effect. they sometimes do that to create a "synthetic" effect in a specific part of a song.

[@SirHairless]

Cool, that would explain it!

[@dorothyrosenberg1301]

Thank for this fun romp with VP.

[@laundrygoddess4]

Love this song so much. Just so much fun

[@Maria...-mo5qm]

My first time listening to the VoicePlay’s interpretation of this iconic classic by ELO :) Thank you for this great reaction/analysis full of positive energy and interesting information!

[@JustMe-vk4fn]

Every song VoicePlay covers seems to become my new favorite version of that particular song. :)

[@lindakennamer2850]

Somehow missed this, wonderful cover as are all of Voiceplay’s! That bassline😍

[@thisismetoday7423]

Isn’t this one so fun? Geoff said he added Blue Skies because why not? But he mentioned loving the Ella Fitzgerald version. Fun fact: it took Eli 20 hours to program the lights to be in sync with the song. Earl really does have a unique voice. You’ll hear him a lot more when you react to Queen in 5. JNone has the best smiles when he sings!

[@SirHairless]

Wow, 20 hours for the lights?! I feel bad I didn't mention them now.....

[@thisismetoday7423]

@@SirHairless Imagine how bad I felt when I realized I had watched the video multiple times and never even noticed the lights at all. I was too busy paying attention to their voices and stage presence!

[@grain3871]

Thank you, sir. Like! As always)❤

[@Badger77722]

Thanks for the reaction and analysis! I had never seen this video from VoicePlay before (I'm still catching up with them, they've got so many videos it'll take me a while!), and it was fun to experience it "new" along with you! This was such a fun video to watch and listen to - Geoff playing "air bass" instead of just voicing it like he usually does, the impeccable harmonies from the middle trio, and Layne...being Layne, making noises you'd swear weren't produced by a human being. Maybe he really is an alien after all....

[@КонстантинКосарев-п3с]

Когда я в 1976 году впервые услышал эту группу, был в шоке. Но после 1983 года перестал за ними следить. Ушла магия Спасибо, что напомнили!

[@karenponchak5304]

I understand your sentiment. I saw ELO (and Kansas) in concert in 1994 and was more impressed by Kansas than ELO.

[@nasaf1sh]

this is my favorite era of voiceplay, geoff, layne, eli, earl, and J

[@johnmetcalf8500]

Wow fabulous analysis. I love this arrangement. I love Earl's voice. I don't know why he left the band. These guys really are so good at what they do and so fun to listen to.

[@chih-chaoyang5290]

I really enjoyed this one. Just so upbeat and fun and put you in a good mood!! You can feel the joy exuberated from them!! Your excitement is also showing during this reaction!! Loving the addition of a different song into this and make them work so well!! The've done that in several songs and I felt they all work well and create another dimension of these songs!! Thanks for another great reaction!!

[@neetgupta1]

Yes this one got be bopping and singing too, Sir Hairless. Voiceplay are so good at these up beat fun ones. I love the Elo song and I've sung Blue Skies at a jazz club in Kingston so I'm partial to a bit of that too and I liked that they wove that one in .

[@loveloochay]

🥶🥶🥶🥶 .. ohhh yeahhhhhh !!! Love me some ELO !! What a song 🥶🥶🥶🥶

[@SirHairless]

[@Kevin-s2v6b]

first time hearing and seeing this, and just left me in awe

[@tricialong8251]

Queen in 5 minutes to hear more of Earl's voice

[@SirHairless]

[@christinestromberg4057]

I love this one. Along with Sh-boom I love to hear them and watch others react to them. It's such a happy song. and the harmonies are brilliant. Geoff really makes a superb bass guitar always. I think their most complex body percussion is in In My Room. I'ts mind boggling.

[@Bleep.]

I'm a big fan of voice play and am becoming a big fan of yours so the fact I don't know this song and have never seen this cover is making me realize how little I know lol

[@dieweisealte-llumia7148]

A real happy song I must admit I didn´t know the original song, in fact I think I only know one song from ELO, but I immediatly recongnized Irving Berlins Blue sky in the middle of this song

[@betsyvondracek4009]

ELO- One of my favorite bands!! Twilight by ELO is one of my favorite songs! It’s not ELO but Voice Play does this version well!!!!! ❤R/A💯🎼

[@katetracton131]

Such a great breakdown of this wonderful cover! I know you’ve done some recent reactions of their videos with Layne’s more creative beatboxing sounds, but there are a couple you might enjoy: Seven Nation Army and Golden Hour (both featuring Anthony Gargiula), and for an example of how flexible Earl is, you should check out Tennessee Whisky. All three of these videos are awesome! :)

[@gilliandrysdale5306]

such a joyous rendition ❤

[@hollyryalsgrubb1273]

Oh my! I had kinda not realized the complexity of this arrangement, the unexpected interlude, and how the harmonies impact our expectations.

[@Shadow_Person11]

Thank you for posting this today. This song never fails to cheer me up, no matter how low I'm feeling, and I seem to always forget about it when I need it most. Your timing was impeccable.

[@cherylsmith3291]

Great reaction and analysis

[@InkWellideas]

Agree - can't get enough Earl. This was a lot of fun - glad you got to it.

[@sarahl1600]

Love hearing your insights and how you break things down - always so educational. Hilariously, at 7:26 the auto-closed captioning interpreted "oo's" as "ooze" so "we've got ooze in the background ..." and that just amused me terribly. 🤣 Altho, knowing VP, I would not put it past them at some point to actually have ooze in the background.

[@SirHairless]

Haha oops! I do spend about 15mins correcting the subtitles before each upload, but they can be pretty bad and full of errors so sometimes I miss some 🥲

[@sarahl1600]

@@SirHairless oh sorry, i meant no offense! your time is valuable and i'd much prefer it spent on the breakdowns and appreciate you going through the auto-caption at all for clean-up 😀 it just created a funny (and coincidentally viable) mental image so figured i'd share the giggle.

[@SirHairless]

@@sarahl1600 Haha don't worry, no offence taken! You'd love seeing what the auto-caption transcript looks like before some clean-up - some words I didn't even know existed make it into there somehow 😅

[@joepalmer3808]

Another great reaction and analysis! I think you’re ready for their Queen in 5 minutes! And btw any of their older stuff with Rachel Potter is amazing!!!!

[@vdoyne]

I enjoyed your analysis of VP's Mr. Blue Sky. BTW, Geoff dropped a new solo publicly today.

[@Jennifer_J_C]

Thanks 😊

[@gsbealer]

Love Mr. Blue Sky. It takes me back to the primarily gray palette of London, and the joy at a sunny day. One of the first things that stood out to me at 5, when we emigrated to California, was the perpetual sunshine and all of the colors in the city. I found it off-putting! 😀 This is a great rendition.

[@fredneckteddy]

I have been a fan of ELO since 1976......it is so nice to see the younger generation appreciate the masterworks of Jeff Lynne.

[@judithboulden3456]

Wow. The vinyl on the wall. I saw that concert in San Francisco. It was awesome!

[@janeramirez8767]

So brilliant to add in the Irving Berlin song! This is my first time hearing this cover. (I know the ELO song, of course.) I loved it! Never really appreciated Earl, having come late to Voice Play, but I'm beginning to catch on.

[@karenzak6627]

Nice reaction to a great arrangement of a song I've never heard of. I can tell you enjoyed it and it was fun. I was thinking of Belongs sing when I saw you were doing this one. 🥴

[@bjspeck4337]

Always a treat. Geoff dropped Big Iron today.

[@CLabij]

The partwork series were originally requested pieces where you could get the sheetmusic for free. (Don't know if that is still possible.) But I think they also didn't to go to extremes in order to make it possible for other acappella groups to use it.

[@57Gauloises57]

Yes, I immediately noticed that passage in Berlin's song, I know it very well, they probably wanted to make a quote to pay homage to Berlin, or maybe I like to think so. Thank you👍

[@elvwood]

If you want to hear more from Earl, my absolute favourite Earl-focused song is _Queen_ _in_ _Five_ _Minutes._ I believe that would also be only your second VP medley (after _Classical_ _Chaos),_ and should give you something to get your teeth into!

[@billiemchone6683]

I have never heard this before!!!! It was awesome 😃 I did not think they did Acapella. Glad they did.

[@SirHairless]

[@amazinggrace5692]

Many people overlook ELO. Have always been a fan of their unique sound. VP did give us a taste of the ELO sound towards the end. Would have like to hear it throughout. Not a fan of the frequent claps here. Was a fun rendition to hear.

[@DravenGal]

This one is in my "Cheer Up" music song list! It's hard to be depressed and listen to it!💙

[@melchizedek47]

A song you might really enjoy reacting to would be Phil Collins In the air tonight live absolutely amazing, it would be an amazing reaction with your knowledge and experience with music and voice.

[@susanbradley5685]

VP kicked into f minor by plugging in a segment of Irving Berlin's classic " Blue Skies", popularized by Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. Great inclusion with ELO's brilliance! (Edit: I typed too soon!)

[@elainecourteau6231]

Such a cool happy song! Love VP’s arrangement. I can’t help thinking of Gardians of the galaxy. I’m sure this song was on a lot of people’s play list cassette… 😉🤗

[@SirHairless]

The soundtrack to Guardians Of The Galaxy

[@MelindaBrown-yz5jc]

❤️❤️

[@BillsWorld688]

You need to check out AGT 2024 Richard Goodall doing a Journey song Don't stop the feeling

[@cute-simon]

My nickname befor it was LYNNESQUE. Ha^^;; JEFF LYNNE is so so genius.

[@annevoss4302]

The musical genius behind ELO is Geoff Layne? 🤣🤣🤣

[@SirHairless]

Geoff Layne Jeff Lynne They're interchangeable it would seem

[@judithboulden3456]

Oops? 😂

[@guadalupejazminvilaguillen4786]

I didn't like the original song but I LOVE the VoicePlay ensemble. Oh man it is short but I loveeeee how tight and colliding some of the harmonies are, it makes that uncomfortable moment solve so good after some of those. Gives me chills! Man you know what would have been great? Well I thought you were gonna do it, in that moment you said they sound like an harmonica, to make the sheet with the each of their notes, for Earl, J. None and Eli. It is sad that Earl and J. None are no longer in the group, luckily J. None works a LOT with them, and Cesar is just a good replacement, I shouldn't call him replacement, he is insanely good. And then the fact that now they have tons of guests always give something different to the songs. If you want to see a REALLY good one, with Earl, you need to react to "This is Halloween" by them. I think you'll love it. It is one of my favorites from the group. Anyways! I loved, as always, all your insight, you ended the reaction at like a quarter of the video, and I kept on watching till the end, I didn't even noticed hahaha Hugz, Lupe.-

[@SirHairless]

Ahh I didn't do it because the chords are simple, although it would've been cool to demonstrate on a harmonica...now where did I put my harmonica 🤔 Oo I don't think I've been recommended 'This Is Halloween' before - thanks!

[@guadalupejazminvilaguillen4786]

@@SirHairless Oh boy... It is one of the favorites of the public from them, strange you didn't get it recommended. Well there you go. Hopefully we see it soon

[@LaurieRein]

I loved this but it’s also ELO - so who didn’t love Jeff Lynne and the boys but this was good, too. I think you liked it a lot or was it Elo?😉

[@SirHairless]

[@jeanineharmon2063]

Bing Crosby sang the original. It was a lot slower.

[@SirHairless]

ELO sang the original My Blue Sky Bing Crosby sang a cover of Blue Skies in the 40s: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Skies_(Irving_Berlin_song)

[@brucer2152]

i appreciate them making it their own...but I"m no purist...but, to me...meh....