Who did it better - "Everytime You Go Away"

I really hate this song. The only way I can make it somewhat palatable is to hear the lyric as "every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you."

My brother and I do that too lol.

I can see how Young's frog in throatisms can be annoying.l, though I think his arrangement plays more to his strengths. Hall sings way better on a technical level, but their version is more of a sparse showcase for his voice that even they/the label didn't release as a single.

I kinda like it being reimagined as a much more minor middle of the road pop ballad so I go Young (ducks)

https://frog101.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/img_0585.jpg

i love Hall’s version

i grew up only knowing the Paul Young

Hall just has an innate (natural?) ability to sell the song more effortlessly, whereas you really notice how hard Young is trying

I like the Paul Young version better because it sounds more 80s hyperreal/otherworldly than the H&O. The H&O is kind of a straight line from Righteous Brothers or something and sounds kinda more trad, like you say, Neando. Young is not afraid to show off his hairspray and I think the smoothness and more “modern” production provides a softer landing for the over-the-top emotiveness. Not sure if that makes any sense at all.

I never thought that 2024 would be the year I compared and contrasted the Hall & Oates version of "Every Time You Go Away" with the Paul Young cover. I have to admit I didn't realise it was a cover. To my ears the Hall & Oates version has a boring, static-sounding arrangement. It's so dull. And it's just as plastic as the Paul Young cover, but earlier plastic, a slightly more classy type of plastic. It's still plastic.

The Paul Young cover is really busy, and I'm not sure why there's a finger-picking guitar solo. Why didn't it have saxophone? It was 1985! It would have benefited enormously from some editing and a sax solo. It really needed a sax solo. It should have had a sax solo. Sax solo. I also wonder why it has so many 1960s-sounding ideas, e.g. the sitar and the Leslie-speaker piano. But it's a more interesting arrangement despite the lack of a sax solo. I've always had a suspicion that Paul Young was self-aware.