Was it really Blondie?

[wuxtry]

As is now well known, Blondie's 1980 smash hit "The Tide Is High" can be heard in the background of the tennis game scene in the recent film "How To Eat Fried Worms". The credits say "Performed by Matthew Sweet" and they did put in his voice for one line (obviously spliced in), but all the rest of the song sounds identical to the original by Blondie, including the vocals. The resemblance is much too exact to be accidental. I'm convinced that they either used the Blondie recording (perhaps with permission, but still without credit) or else made a deliberate imitation of it, hoping the viewers would think it was Blondie. The latter is possible but unlikely, I think, because making an imitation indistinguishable from an original (especially with all the strings/horns/percussion) is not an easy task, and I'd be surprised if any film studio would go to that much trouble when it wasn't necessary.

[Farin]

do you have a sound example of that version somewhere?

[wuxtry]

All I have is the DVD of the film. I don't know what's on the soundtrack CD, but they often have versions different from those in the film itself. In fact, I guess it's very unlikely that they would put Blondie on their CD under Sweet's name. But still, I suspect that's what they did in the film.

[Farin]

according to IMDb and an online shop with the soundtrack I just googled it's really credited to Matthew Sweet...

[wuxtry]

I know it's credited to him, I just said so myself. That just has to do with contracts and royalties and so on. They dubbed his voice onto a backing track with other voices and instruments. You can hear the "pops" where they spliced the tapes at the beginning and end of the line he sings.

The question is, where did they get that backing track? Did they make it themselves, or is it the Blondie record, which it sounds exactly like? It's legal to do that as long as you get permission from the owners of the recording you use. I'm sure they didn't do it without permission.

Notice also, by the way, that (in Sweet's line only) there is a chorus of humming much louder than on the rest of the song. It's even possible that those hums were put in just to drown out Debbie Harry's voice, as she sang that line solo just as Sweet did.