mixtape maestro (2.0)

Swiss-born, blue-(bespectacled)eyed soul singer Stefanie Heinzman lunges into the danger zone with this one, a brow-raising cover of Metallica’s 1991 Black Album classic, “The Unforgiven”, that riskily re-shades the dark ballad with a retro-soul-pop bounce.

Stripped of it’s brooding metal masculinity to be planted amidst ska-tinged guitar points and a perky bass swing, the remake (found on the Deluxe Edition of the singer’s debut, Masterplan) manages to be mildly likable, but that’s mainly because of the stunning amusement of the bookworm-ish-looking cutie packing such a fine voice (think Lisa Loeb singing like Joss Stone). She can’t necessarily be forgiven, though, for thinking it was a good idea to transform the song’s still powerful tale into a toe-tapping jig. Now if Cee-Lo/ Gnarls Barkley were behind this, it would probably be met with cries of “brilliant!!”; in the hands of Heinzmann, who was only one when the original first came out, it instead ends up sounding like one of those ill-thought-out American Idol makeovers.

Is she even aware of what she’s singing about?