"24 Karat Gold" (the song/demo) discussion

[sorcerer999]

I thought it might be fun to discuss our opinions on the demo for "24 Karat Gold" since it's (tentatively) going to be the title track from the new record.

I've been listening to it for many years and always thought it was pretty cool, however it was never really one of my favorites. Very dark, witchy and enigmatic. It's really hard to pin down who or what the hell she's singing about and piece together a story.

There are several versions of the demo in various forms. For many years, we'd only had a simple piano/drum machine/one vocal track demo, until we got the Master Reels, and consequently more and more vocal takes of the song.

There's a take off the Masters called "23 All Vocals Mix" which basically has the same piano/drum machine like the original demo, but adds a guitar and basically has a "million Stevies" overlapping vocals and harmonies. It's extremely strange, off putting and schizophrenic, but I LOVE IT!!! There are so many great lyrics added that weren't in the original demo we'd all heard in the years prior to the Master Reels.

"...I myself, see myself differently than the one that only you see..."

"...I'm up in arms to open hearts in such dark times..."

"...each one of us must finally keep some kind of promise to you...if you choose to remember your dreams...wheel of chance..."

"...and the moon hung on..."

"...and there was this castle, and they tried to keep it..."

"...and the CHILD had been found..."

"...and he said you are WRONG if you do fear me, my love..."

Ever since they announced this project, I've been listening to this version of the demo a lot. At least once a day. It's so very cool and now, after all these years, it has become one of my new favorite Stevie demos. I'm really hoping a lot of these crazy lyrics make it on to this newly recorded version.

From the little snippet that Dave posted last night (which appears to be the very end of the song) it seems as if the new version is going to sound more Pop Rock than the dark and strange demo. Of course, I'm only going by the 16 seconds of what we heard. I still hope the rest of the song retains a little bit of the dark original piano part that Stevie plays in the demo. But it wouldn't surprise me if we're all in for something totally new altogether, music-wise.

What do you guys think?