COURTNEY BARNETT RELEASES 'JUST FOR YOU' A KEV CARMODY SONG
TAKEN FROM THE FORTHCOMING ALBUM ‘CANNOT BUY MY SOUL’ – THE SONGS OF KEV CARMODY
OUT AUGUST 21 - PRE ORDER HERE
Courtney Barnett today shares the video for her beautiful cover of Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter Kev Carmody’ “Just For You.”
“A real honour to be part of this project and to celebrate Kev’s beautiful songwriting. I think “Just For You” is one of the most perfect love songs ever written. “ – Courtney Barnett
Courtney’s cover is part of an upcoming and updated reissue of the 2007 Carmody tribute album Cannot Buy My Soul, featuring new tracks from Jimmy Barnes, Kasey Chambers, Kate Miller-Heidke, Alice Skye, Electric Fields, and more.
“’Just for You,’ it’s virtually a love song that I’ve directed at everybody, for everybody … It’s trying to get right to the core to say even though we have our disagreements and stuff, I still love you all very much, and I love you as an individual very much.” Says Carmody of the song. “Courtney's presentation is so beautifully endearing and lifts my original to another plain. Her woman's presentation puts a whole new perspective on the original lyrics.”
The video is directed by album producer Sian Darling and is filmed in one take starring Courtney and her trusty hound, Rosa.
“Uncle Kev says that these are simple lyrics trying to get right to the core, that it's a love song directed at everybody. For him, the message is, "Even though we have our disagreements, I still love you all very much. And I love you as an individual very much." I want the video to illustrate the power from the simplicity of Uncle Kev's lyrics and intentions, and the exceptional tenderness in Courtney's expression of them.” Says Darling of the video.
Cannot Buy My Soul, the Kev Carmody tribute album, will be released on August 21 through EMI Recorded Music Australia. It celebrates the Indigenous songwriter's work while making an ageless contribution to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Kev Carmody is one of Australia’s pre-eminent Indigenous singer-songwriters. A new audience was alerted to Carmody through the 2007 album Cannot Buy My Soul, produced by Paul Kelly, with versions of his songs by artists including Bernard Fanning, Missy Higgins, Troy Cassar-Daley and Archie Roach plus Carmody’s own performances. The album has been refreshed for this 2020 edition, produced by Siân Darling, with the original 32 tracks and ten new additions. See track listing for multiple formats below.
Kev’s 1988 debut album, Pillars of Society, remains one of the most powerful protest albums you will hear, from Australia or anywhere else, fueled by anger at injustice and hypocrisy. One of the key tracks is Thou Shalt Not Steal, with its searing description of dispossession (“In 1788 down Sydney Cove the first white people land/Said sorry boys our gain’s your loss/We’re gonna steal your land”) and environmental destruction (“In 200 years your materialism has plucked the forests clean”).
Another important point in the Carmody story was writing From Little Things Big Things Grow with Paul Kelly, about the fight for land rights by the Gurindji people in the Northern Territory led by Vincent Lingiari.
These songs became central to Cannot Buy My Soul and the six new recordings for the 2020 release show more of the depth of Carmody’s achievement.
Carmody’s openness to new challenges has been central to his life and his music, which is why he is so thrilled to hear his songs taken in fresh directions. “It’s great to hear the younger ones take it into their own genre, add their own words to them. That’s part of the oral tradition, pass it on.”
And sometimes it’s good to be proven right. Forty years ago he tried his luck at the Tamworth country music festival. It didn’t go well. “I got told to clear off, I didn’t have a permit and they didn’t like what I was singing about.” This year he returned. At an outdoor concert he joined Paul Kelly and his band to perform From Little Things Big Things Grow. He was surprised as Kasey Chambers, Jimmy Barnes and Troy Cassar-Daley took to the stage to join them in rousing chorus.
Out front, 10,000 people cheered them on.
Cannot Buy My Soul is reissued on August 21 through EMI Recorded Music. It will be available on vinyl for the first time in a release containing the cover versions with the aboriginal flag design on the vinyl. Please see below track listing for different versions.