Full circle: after writing a song named after Kim Wilde and covering one of her big hits, former Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley has taken the next step: she makes an appearance on Wilde’s new album, Never Say Never, reprising “Kids In America” with Wilde and a suitably 21st-century wall of sound. As is usually the case when a star decides to cover her own song, the 2006 edition of “Kids In America” could be the greatest thing you hear or year—or it may induce nausea and vomiting. You’ll never know until you hear it, though.

Aside from being a fun detour, though, the song reminds me of how much I miss Charlotte Hatherley’s accent. Her new album was, at last report, due late this year. Fingers crossed.

Considering how many times I’ve mentioned Versus before, it surprises me that I’ve only ever posted one of their songs. So here’s another, to round out the Shangri-Las miniseries. (I’ll save you the misfortune of having to listen to Blondie’s second go at “Out In The Streets” from 1999’s No Exit, which scrubs away all of the charm of the 1975 version.)

2000’s Shangri-La was labeled an EP, though it contains “Shangri-La,” a Versus song that would appear on their final album the same year. There’s a concept to this EP. See if you can spot it from the tracklist:

1. Shangri-La
2. Shangri-La
3. Out In The Streets
4. Shangri-La

The other two “Shangri-La”s are covers of songs by Electric Light Orchestra and the Kinks. And of course “Out In The Streets” is a Shangri-Las original. It’s the sort of concept that appeals almost exclusively to record nerds with a weakness for sychronicity, except that now that Versus has done it, the Shangri-Las angle is no longer available for mix tape fodder.

The Blondie demo was an exercise in minimalism (though this is probably because the song was a demo from the start of their career, published only for historical import on the remastered debut album). Though more polished, Versus take the minimalism a step further. The arrangement is spare, the tempo is slowed down to a crawl, and the backing vocals are fed through effects to make them seem distant. It’s not quite the opposite of the original’s melodrama, more like the same story updated to fit a modern sensibility—no longer the great tragedy of yesteryear, but rather just another tale of love lost out of thousands in the big city.

Occasionally, in retrospectives of product and industrial design held at big art galleries, you’ll see objects that look positively at odds with our current conception of design because they’re so ubiquitous that it seems like they’ve always simply existed. The Model 500 telephone is a good example—someone had to come up with the look and functionality of the thing, and they were so successful that now we see that shape and immediately think “telephone.” Not “the Model 500 telephone” or “a Western Electric telephone” or “the telephone Henry Dreyfuss Associates designed”—just “telephone.” Because its shape is so universally known, the Model 500 doesn’t feel like the product of someone’s ingenuity; it’s like Athena springing fully formed from the head of Zeus, as if it was always meant to be.

By virtue of its success, Blondie can claim similar stature. Their influence is ubiquitous; however strange they may have appeared back in the 70s, now everyone acknowledges Blondie’s contributions to pop music, and their musical DNA has been absorbed into the cultural aesthetic. This is both a blessing and a curse; on the one hand, Blondie is assured of its place in music history, and no one will forget Deborah Harry any time soon. On the other hand, it also means that I’m already sick of “One Way Or Another,” even though I’ve only heard it a couple of times in a Swiffer commercial. I had no idea it was a Blondie song, nor even an inkling that it wasn’t composed specifically for the commercial. Blessing and curse: when your music is so popular that it becomes nearly universal, it also runs the risk of becoming commonplace and uninteresting as a result. There may come a time in the future when most laypeople won’t be able to say what makes Blondie Blondie, just like today most people can’t really say what specific characteristics of Bach’s music are his own.

And so the strange mindfuck that is Blondie’s cover of “Out In The Streets.” As a direct response to the original from a decade earlier, this demo is practically an antithesis. Bereft of all the instrumental and vocal dramatics, “Out In The Streets” is an entirely different song. In place of the anguish and heartbreak, there’s an odd resignation, as though a world-weary Harry can barely conjure up the strength of emotion the original demanded. “So I gotta set him free” loses its melodramatic edge, just becomes yet another episode in a long line of relationships. Blondie expresses a weariness where the Shangri-Las acted as if their lives hung in the balance. All this makes sense, considering the number of times Blondie’s been labelled “60s girl group meets 70s ironic punk” or some similar combination.

But there’s another take on the song, informed by the three decades since Blondie cut this demo: it sounds like Deborah Harry singing in a karaoke lounge at last call. However transgressive this track might’ve been in the 70s—and I’ll honestly never know, seeing as how I wasn’t even born then—it sounds a bit amateurish today in its apparent lack of gusto. Maybe it’s that we’ve become immune to Blondie’s charms, or maybe it’s just a demo and it didn’t sound amazing back then either. I prefer the first take on the song but can’t get the second take out of my mind. Blessing and curse.

This song is less than a minute, so I’ll be equally brief: Be Your Own Pet (Be Your Own PET?) is from Nashville, but for some reason it’s the Brits who love them. Though honestly, it’s just a matter of time before Jemima Pearl has her own harem of underage indie punk boys doing her bidding, because she is just. that. awesome. Blah blah second coming of Karen O blah blah like when the Donnas were young blah blah totally RAWKS! This is the hormone-fueled sound of the unstoppable, invincible, totally awesome teen rock army. Are you in?