Black Marble aka Chris Stewart has shared a new single, “Johnny and Mary”, a rendition of a song originally performed by Robert Palmer, and the second song made available from an EP of cover songs titled I Must Be Living Twice, due out August 14, 2020 on Sacred Bones Records. I Must Be Living Twice was recorded shortly after 2019’s acclaimed full-length album Bigger Than Life.
Stewart states: “A lot of people know Robert Palmer as this slightly garish 1980s pop icon, but not everyone is aware of his early more bedroomy synth stuff he wrote before he really got big. I’m always reminded of a festival he headlined in the early ‘80s. The Cure opened. They get the hook for time reasons and walking off stage, Robert Smith proudly proclaims ‘fuck Robert Palmer’ to a throng of drunk festival goers. A smattering of the chant ‘punk rock’ (still a relatively new thing at the time) starts to be heard. Everyone has their time I guess, sort of a recurring theme of my work. Even my band’s name is more or less about going in and out of fashion.” He goes on to say: “It’s not hard to find this old song kind of enchanting and more accessible than his ‘Addicted to Love’ era stuff, all relevancy subtext aside. And since the themes of the song deal with someone who’s undergoing sort of a career crisis, ‘scared that he’ll be caught, without a second thought,’ I thought it would be interesting to cover in the context of who he was and what he (and artists more broadly) often go through. It also felt nice to give some props to an early tune, focusing on a time in his ascent before a lot of inevitable complications.”
Listen to Black Marble’s cover of “Johnny and Mary” below: