I had more than one good options to choose from for the “cover of the week,” so I’m taking advantage of this being my blog, which probably nobody reads or looks to for rules or regularity and will post the other one I really liked tomorrow. But I’m selecting this for “cover of the week” in part because it is well-performed and in part because it is a relatively obscure Bowie song.

I read somewhere that some fans of Labyrinth know next to nothing about Bowie other than his role in the movie, whereas for some Bowie fans, that same role is almost an aberration. There’s much to be said about the movie (probably the subject of a future blog post), but if nothing else, it contains several original songs by Bowie, mostly performed by Bowie. Not all of the songs from the movie are great (for instance, “Chilly Down” stinks), but most of the songs stand up on their own and are actually pretty good. “As the World Falls Down” is one such example. Unusual for Bowie, it’s a straightforward love song, which Nicholas Pegg calls, “exceedingly pretty.”

Actually, little from Bowie is totally straightforward. It is a pretty love song for sure, but hiding in plain sight is the concept of Armageddon. The song, after all is actually called, “As the World Falls Down.” Maybe the distance between this and “Five Years” isn’t as great as it seems.

From what I can tell, Chris Oliviera is a Spanish-language musician. She has a YouTube page featuring performances of Spanish language songs as well as English language covers. She maintains the same setup for all of these songs, but as you will see the video has relatively high production value and is enhanced by various special effects.

I like the choice of song, I like the performance. Tomorrow I’ll post the song that made this one a tough call for cover of the week.