Brian Fallon Mega Post: Skin-Tight Jeans... and White T-Shirts

I was looking around on youtube yesterday for a video for the song "Behold the Hurricane" by The Horrible Crowes (a side project of The Gaslight Anthem's lead singer Brian Fallon), and I stumbled across two live performances of Fallon singing Katy Perry's song "Teenage Dream," which I would have loved to actually see live, because "Teenage Dream" was my Pop Jam of 2010, and Fallon has a way of turning pop songs into really nice ballads without losing their hooks, that endorphin-rush quality that makes them appealing in the first place. I know people have a lot of issues with Katy Perry -- hell, I have some issues with Katy Perry -- but something about "Teenage Dream" really clicks with me, and it's actually a more appropriate song for Fallon to sing than it initially seems (that "You make me feel pretty/without any makeup on" first line is a real eyebrow-raiser for a male singer), because a lot of "Teenage Dream"'s appeal is its retro quality, and The Gaslight Anthem are nothing if not masters at recreating sounds, feelings and images from the middle of the twentieth century. Fallon's lyrics almost always have a nostalgic air to them, and he maintains the nostalgia in "Teenage Dream" even without using the original track's late-seventies/early-eighties synth sounds.

For what it's worth, the video for "Behold the Hurricane" is also worth checking out, although it strikes a decidedly darker tone than "Teenage Dream" and is also one of those videos where I'm pretty sure I understand what's going on... but maybe not completely. It's definitely a different interpretation of the song than I had when I listened to it on The Horrible Crowes' album, but not so different that it doesn't make sense, and it's also nice to see a video from Fallon that goes beyond the basic punk/rock-band-sings-a-song concept that TGA usually uses.