“The original ‘70s track has been a favorite on my ‘Evening’ playlist for a long time,” says UK music topliner LIMAHL about his reimagining of the classic folk/rock hit “A Horse With No Name” that is out now. “The idea to reimagine it was always ticking away in the back of my mind.” Listen Here
The song was first released in 1971 in the UK (1972 in the US), the original was composed and performed by folk rock trio America and topped Billboard’s Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts (it reached #3 on the UK Singles chart and was certified gold in 1972). Adapting the ‘70s musical aesthetics and injecting a bit of ‘90s electronica, Limahl’s updated version of the song carries a bit of a retro-futuristic quality that feels equally at home in 2025.
“The ‘90s have been enjoying a revival which prompted me to experiment with the drums/rhythms from that decade,” he explains. “Then the jerky, ‘Jupiter 8’ analogue synthesizer/sequencer was added with a filtering envelope and it became an important personality in the track.” He also toyed with the iconic non-lexical “la la” vocal and updated it, incorporating it further into the song. Absent on the ‘70s original but included in this rendition is the ‘la la’ motif in the intro, the key-change on the last verse, and in the final chorus, the ‘la la’s’ crisscrossing the main lyric with the melody. Saying that almost as an afterthought, guitar from standout musician Steve Cooper was added, and it became the “icing on the cake.”
The resulting track transforms the classic folk track with a mesmerizing and hypnotic synth-dominated swirl, making the song pop and click in ways that would have been unimaginable in the 1970s.
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