By Kayla Vianna
A couple months ago, Del Water Gap covered “Sailor Song” by Gigi Pérez for triple j’s YouTube channel. I was asked to review it, so here are my thoughts about it:
First, some context. Indie-folk artist Gigi Pérez self-released her track “Sailor Song” in mid-2024, which later blew up on TikTok and reached Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. The lyrics scream the despair accompanying a lesbian romance due to societal prejudice against non-cishet couples. She craves the romantic love of a woman but intimately feels distress in openly conveying it. The instrumentation follows the lyrical message; the guitar is strummed angrily, and the atmospheric multi-tracks engulf her hopelessness. I carry much love for this song.
Del Water Gap’s cover is more faithful to the song than most other covers I’ve seen. The impressive string arrangement captured that engulfing soundscape of the recording, and the drums carried the track’s momentum well. His clean and precise vocals matched Perez’s cadence and vocal flips. The ending specifically pleased me very much. Rather than a traditional fade-out or large impact ending, they chose to end it with only the instrument’s open resonation. The open space after ending gives a unique blend of tension and peacefulness, as to signal that the music lives on. I wish triple j’s editing allowed the ending to resonate longer, but I understand why it didn’t because of the nature of YouTube. Del Water Gap’s cover was nicely done.
Given the nature of covers, a comparison to Gigi Pérez’s own interpretation of the song feels right to me. For this, I chose Pérez’s performance on the Jimmy Fallon Show. To me, Gigi Pérez’s live version captures an original core emotion that Del Water Gap’s cover lacks: desperation. Pérez’s vocals and unstable tempo carry a stressed and frantic energy, and the feeling of constant rush permeates her performance. Del Water Gap takes a different approach with his cover. The technicality takes precedence over the raw emotion that Perez chooses to convey. The difference between versions doesn’t detract from the cover, but my preference lies with Gigi Pérez’s rawness over Del Water Gap’s precision.
Altogether, Del Water Gap gave us a good cover of “Sailor Song.” It sounds as close as the studio recording as one physically can, but there are tracks which the emotion must shine through. I feel that “Sailor Song” is one of them.
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