To me, "Fade Into You" is not a song that makes sense as a duet. Mazzy Star's 1993 classic is a solitary murmur of sleepy longing. There's obviously a "you" in the song, but I think the "you" exists entirely in the singer's head. The song is not an act of communication. It's all internal. That's how I feel, anyway. But the beauty of something like "Fade Into You," one of those songs that everyone knows, is that different people can hear it different ways. For Gregory Alan Isakov and Sylvan Esso, it's a duet.
Gregory Alan Isakov is a veteran folk singer-songwriter based in Colorado. His most recent album was 2023's Appaloosa Bones. He's got recent collaborations with people like Noah Kahan and Nathaniel Rateliff, and he's playing shows with Zach Bryan and Brandi Carlile this summer. North Carolina duo Sylvan Esso took their music off Spotify and released the single "WDID" last year. Now, Isakov and Sylvan Esso have teamed up to remake "Fade Into You" as a folky back-and-forth between Isakov and Amelia Meath, with some of Sylvan Esso's floating beeps in the mix. It's nice! Here's what Isakov says about it:
I grew up listening to Mazzy Star and sort of sketched this song out one afternoon. I had read an article about Hope Sandoval (the singer of Mazzy Star) the week before, and there was this paragraph about how she played a few shows at the Sydney Opera House in almost complete darkness. Some of the crowd was super disgruntled about it and walked out. I remember thinking, "Wow, what a hero." I sat on the recording I made for a long time, thinking it wasn’t quite finished, and reached out to Amelia of Sylvan Esso. She has one of my favorite voices of all time. Once I heard her on it, it felt ready. I really love how it came out.
Below, check out Isakov and Sylvan Esso's take on "Fade Into You," as well as the original Mazzy Star video.
