Morgan James - Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James (2014-2018)

Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox is a musical collective with an interesting conceit: they take popular songs from the last few decades and recast them in drastically different arrangements, turning slick pop hits into ragtime jazz, 1960s modern, 1940s swing, and the like. In my opinion, it's a very hit and miss approach. Sometimes it works great and makes you appreciate a song in a new way. Other times, it's more like a failed experiment. But their versions are definitely interesting, which is why all their songs combined have received more than a billion views on YouTube. You can read more about this collective at Wikipedia:

Postmodern Jukebox - Wikipedia

One aspect of this collective is that there's a rotating cast of lead vocalists, with no one singer dominating. But of all the vocalists they've used, Morgan James at least ties for being the most prominent. That makes perfect sense to me, since she's very vocally gifted and has an attractive appearance that helps get more YouTube views. I've posted a number of albums of her acoustic cover versions, and I plan on posting a lot more. I've also compiled all her lead vocal turns with Postmodern Jukebox. Luckily, there are just enough songs for an album.

The vast majority of the performances here come from Postmodern Jukebox studio albums, which basically just repackage their popular YouTube videos. But two of the performances are unreleased ("All About that Bass" and "Sweet Child o' Mine"). Don't worry though, the sound quality of those are just as excellent as the others. And note that unlilke most of the other Morgan James music I've been posting, which is acoustic, these are generally full band performances.

This includes James's version of "Dream On" by Aerosmith. The video of it has gotten over 20 million views on YouTube, and for good reason, because she blows the song out of the water. 

I was torn over whether to include "Barbie Girl" or not. I consider the original by Aqua to be a truly vile song that is best totally forgotten. But this version is different enough (done in a vintage Beach Boys style) to make it at least bearable. If you have issues with the song like I do, you can always just delete that one.

This album is 43 minutes long. James apparently hasn't performed as part of the Postmodern Jukebox collective since 2018. But if she ever does more with them, I'll consider adding that here.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song: 

01 Maps - Maroon 5
02 Really Don't Care - Demi Lovato
03 Break Free - Ariana Grande
04 All About That Bass - Meghan Trainor
05 Barbie Girl - Aqua
06 Take Me to Church - Hozier
07 Jealous - Nick Jonas
08 Dream On - Aerosmith
09 Who Wants to Live Forever - Queen
10 It's a Man's Man's Man's World - James Brown
11 Sweet Child o' Mine - Guns N' Roses

And here's the usual song list:

01 Maps (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
02 Really Don't Care (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
03 Break Free (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
04 All About That Bass (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Haley Reinhart, Morgan James & Ariana Savalas)
05 Barbie Girl (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
06 Take Me to Church (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
07 Jealous (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
08 Dream On (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
09 Who Wants to Live Forever (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
10 It's a Man's Man's Man's World (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
11 Sweet Child o' Mine (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266881/MorganJ_2014-2018_ScttBradleesPstmodernJukebox_atse.zip.html

Thanks again to PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, who put the cover together while I was having computer trouble a couple of weeks ago. I selected the image, which is a screenshot from one of her YouTube videos.