Irony may be dead, but in Phish 3.0, lesbian irony is alive and well.

"I Kissed a Girl" made its Phishy debut in the middle of "Harpua" at the summer 2009 tour closer at SPAC. As with the interstitial songs from the other two post-hiatus "Harpuas", Fish slays the vocals in his inimitable dying whale falsetto. This peculiar cover found Phish not only behind the curve (Katy Perry's confectionery ode to bi-curiosity charted a year earlier) but slumming artistically as well.

Yeah, slumming. There, I said it.

Perry's collaboration with producer Dr. Luke was widely and fairly criticized as a bald-faced ripoff -- conceptually, if not musically -- of Jill Sobule's 1995 hit of the same name. While God knows that the world needs pop-tarts like Perry, Sobule is a legitimate artist with a legitimate beef, and her version might have been a classier call, all things considered. But lest I be accused of taking anything too seriously, we're talking about a work interpreted by a man in a donut muu-muu in the middle of a prog epic about a dog named Harpua and a cat named Poster Nutbag.

Next.

Phish, "I Kissed a Girl" – 8/16/09, Saratoga Springs, NY

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