Music

Songs of the week: A Tribe Called Quest, Marlene Enright, Alicia Keys and Aaron Gibson

If it weren’t for the fact that Trump had been welcomed as a guest host last year, you’d almost say SNL had been cathartic

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Eoin Butler
Wed Nov 16 2016 - 17:11

A Tribe Called Quest - We The People (Live on SNL)

The SNL episode following Donald Trump's shock election victory last week was a sombre affair. The show's breakout star Kate McKinnon played a melancholy version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah on piano. Host Dave Chappelle gently ribbed his white, liberal, metropolitan audience for only recently copping to the fact that their country is, basically, racist. Then musical guests A Tribe Called Quest performed this heartfelt paean for tolerance. Honestly, if it weren't for the awkward, unacknowledged fact that Donald Trump had been welcomed as a guest host there last November, just four months after he branded Mexicans rapists and murders, you'd almost say the show had been cathartic.

Marlene Enright - Alchemy

"I hold my head high / And I look calamity straight in the eye…" On the third single from her forthcoming Placemats and Second Cuts album, Marlene Enright is self-assured in the face of adversity. In the four- minute video, the Cork singer-songwriter successfully interacts with 34 different props in a single take. As someone who once botched and had to reshoot, 11 times, a sequence in which I opened a door and walked through it, I doff my cap to you, madam.

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Alicia Keys ft. A$AP Rocky - Blended Family (What You Do For Love)

The first single from Keys' sixth studio album Here is this ode to her own blended family – ie, a family that includes her husband's children from a previous relationship. Rather than a family that have been whisked in a blender. (I'm 99% certain.)

Aaron Gibson - Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Live on The Voice)

Twenty-five year old Aaron Gibson defied his mentor Miley Cyrus' advice to perform this version of Fr John Misty's 2012 single on The Voice last Monday. The songwriter's flattered Facebook response? "Why God why."