This Musical Monday, the Writing's on the Wall.

This is a different sort of Musical Monday post, as I'm featuring not just one artist and one video, but two from two different artists. What's more, both featured songs are covers and the videos that support them little more than just the performers performing. You won't find many videos like that here, but today's featured songs by Taps Maguadza and  Sofia Karlberg are too good for me to not post!

Taps Mugadza, or just Taps, is a Zimbabwean soul and pop singer who, among his achievements, has managed to record a version of Sam Smith's "Writing's On the Wall" that fixes the weaknesses of the original--which got a bit repetitive in the chorus as the song went on--and thus manages to be better than one of the best theme songs to recent James Bond movies. Take a listen!



Almost as good as Taps' version, is the one recorded by Sofia Karlberg, a Swedish singer who first became famous by uploading cover songs to YouTube. Like Taps, she brings a little more variation to the song's chorus, but she doesn't bring quite the same level of emotion to the song present in either Taps' or Smith's versions. Also, like Taps, her video is just a recording of her singing... but, again, like Taps, this is such a beautiful song that it's worthy of being featured here.



(An interesting note: Both these versions were recorded and uploaded to YouTube within a month of each other, back in 2015. I wonder why both artists decided to do their videos in black and white?)