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Apr 17, 2020 By Lily Guthrie Margo Guryan

While Margo Guryan’s 1972 “The Hum” was written about President Nixon’s tape machine during the Watergate scandal, Bedouine (aka Azniv Korkejian) has recycled the song and applied it to today’s COVID-19 quarantine. This new release is a direct homage to the original but highlights elements of the Trump administration, an unpredictable economy, and the movement to stop global warming. Check out Bedouine’s version of “The Hum” below via Spacebomb, followed by the original.

Korkejian is a longtime listener of Guryan, a girl born in Queens during the Great Depression who was trained in jazz piano. Guryan grew an interest in writing pop music after listening to The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” inspiring her sole studio album, released in 1968. However, “The Hum” wasn’t heard by the public until 2001 when Oglio Records put out Guryan’s 25 Demos, which featured the track.

Korkejian didn’t fully recognize the shrewdness of her lyrics until “The Hum” became a personal project, specifically: “The rich save money and the poor save gas/Vote for an elephant and get an ass/He hires and he fires, he appoints and sacks/But he can’t figure out his income tax.”

“It’s poignant how much of it feels topical,” Korkejian says in a press release, “like it could have been written today.”

Although this isn’t her first cover, it’s Bedouine’s first release since her second album, 2019’s Bird Songs of a Killjoy.

Korkejian was born in Aleppo, Syria to Armenian parents, but spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia and then moved to America when her family won a Green Card lottery. She’s lived all over the U.S., including Boston, Houston, Lexington, Austin, Savannah, and Los Angeles.

Read our 2017 interview with Bedouine.

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