Just

Album: Version (2006)
Charted: 31
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Songfacts®:

  • "Just" originally appeared on Radiohead's 1995 album The Bends. Ronson recorded a cover for a Radiohead tribute album in 2006. It was this that gave him the recipe for his Version album, which was one of the best-sellers in the UK in 2007. Ronson told the Daily Mail February 15, 2008: "'Just' was the catalyst for the whole of Version. I was adding percussion and guitar to the track, but the guitars were too heavy. They were overpowering the slinkiness of the beat, so I struck on the idea of replacing the guitars with horns. That gave me the blueprint for an album."
  • This features on lead vocals Alex Greenwald, the singer for the Californian rock band Phantom Planet.
  • Ronson recalled in an interview with Q magazine March 2008 how he drunkenly went up to Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien at a concert and said, "Hi! I did that cover of 'Just' and I think you're amazing." O'Brien looked at him quizzically and said, "Oh, you're that DJ bloke who turned our song into a party song."
  • The song proved to be a breakthrough track for Ronson. He told Q magazine: "BBE records were making a compilation of Radiohead covers. I was obsessed with the guitar part in the middle. I thought I'd loop that and get somebody to rap on it. As I started to get more into it I got the idea, 'OK, so what if the horns did the heavy stuff? I know it's a bad word to use when you're covering a Radiohead song of torment, but I had so much fun creating the cover. You're seeing how it's constructed. It's like seeing the inside of a clock."

    Ronson added: "Because (BBC radio DJs) Gilles Peterson and Zane Lowe started playing my version of Just, I ended up with a record deal."

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