Hello and welcome to another edition of the Laptop Sessions with Jim Fusco! It’s getting a bit lonely around here- I gotta start bugging the guys to post again. It’s funny how I didn’t post for five years…and I was thinking, “Why was it five years?” And then I realized that my son turns five this week- ah, that’ll do it!

Today, I bring you a song and an artist that I don’t think anyone would’ve predicted. It’s actually something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time- possibly a decade or more. But, I was never confident enough in the vocals to pull it off. Well, thanks to the coronavirusp-related lockdown and the fact that I haven’t gotten sick for months with my teacher wife and school-age kids at home, I’m in fine voice to finally give this one a try. And, you know what, I’m proud to say that I can sing as well as a 75-year-old woman!

Okay, that’s not really fair. I’d be willing to bet that many parts of Cher are actually YOUNGER than me! 🙂 I actually stole that joke from myself. I came up with a product promo for the fuel efficient Jeep Grand Cher-okee, for all of those who “believe in life” after high gas prices. And much like Cher, the car features a bunch of plastic parts tacked onto it…and a curly black wig.

Really, though, if we could all look like her in our 70s!! She looks better now than she did in the 1960’s! She can also belt out those songs without missing a beat, though I’ve always been opposed to the overused and ridiculous sounding autotune in this song. I’m okay with a little of the that autotune effect but I’m not a fan of the T-Pain classic 90’s sound. And that’s what this song (now dubbed the Cher-effect) has. So, what better tune to turn into an acoustic cover version, right? Strip away the auto-tune, the fake bass drum loop, and the warbly synthesizers and you’ve got, what I believe to be, a really great song. The message is a good one: I’m bummed that I lost you, but you know what, I was losing my faith but now I’m thinking that I’m too good for you!

The song is fairly easy to play, but I had to do some interesting capo positioning to make it easier to get the proper sound on that Fmaj7 chord. If you don’t know what that is, that’s the cool second chord you hear in the verses. There’s not a great inversion to play for that chord to make it sound like the original, so I had to throw a capo on to help me play that one chord only. It actually made the rest of the song more difficult to play, but it made that one chord easier, so I went with it. See, the more you know!

I think I may be one of the only guys to ever attempt this song acoustically. Or at the very least the only one who sings it in the original key! To me, this is one of those songs that has the potential of getting very popular on YouTube, thanks in part to its inclusion in that ridiculous Netflix movie with Will Farrell and Rachel McAdams, “Eurovision Song Contest: the Story of Fire Saga.”

I’m going to keep the Sessions coming for at least another couple of months this “season”- I can’t believe this is already my sixth video since coming back! I’m glad that the channel seems to have increased in popularity again and let’s hope it continues to do so. It’s been so much with my new set up, as I just flip a few switches, tune-up, and start playing. Just like those good ol’ days when I used to record on an actual laptop… 🙂

Take care of yourselves and we’ll see you next time!