Brian Eno is offering a wild twist on a ’90s-era song by David Bowie in honor of Earth Day.
This newly reissued version of “Get Real” is part of a climate change-focused album titled Sounds Right, developed by Eno in conjunction with the Museum for the United Nations. He’s added the sound of hyenas and wild pigs to align with the theme. Listen below.
“It’s a powerful song – very good lyrics – and with this new kind of container that we’re putting it in of being a song about relationship with the Earth, I think it really works,” Eno tells the Midnight Chats podcast. “The wild pigs sound really good. … So yes we’ll have David, Bri and some wild pigs!”
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Turns out, he spent a good amount of time on this choice. “Well, I’ve got a number of recordings of different animals here,” Eno said. “I wanted big, slightly menacing animals in the song. Not birds and wind and things like that. So I tried a Siberian tiger. That was a bit too overwhelming. I tried some rooks. I’ve always loved rooks, but they sounded like ducks in that context, which is not quite the same message.”
Would David Bowie Have Approved?
“Get Real” originally appeared as a bonus track on international editions of 1995’s Outside. The LP marked a reunion between Bowie and Eno, whose best-known work together formed the Berlin Trilogy.
Bowie died at age 69 in 2016. Eno is certain he’d approve of his tweaks to “Get Real”: “He would have loved it,” Eno argued. “Yeah, he’d say: ‘Sounds good to me, Bri. I think we should go ahead with that.'”
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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