Zilly Lilly - Beauty & The Beast

Zilly Lilly - 2019 Movers Shakers & Innovators Showcase from Burlesque Hall of Fame on Vimeo.

 Most fairy tales are stories ostensibly geared to children but which contain themes and ideas that adults can unpack all day. The psychosexual content of "Beauty and the Beast" is perhaps the most obvious example, and Zilly Lilly unites the iconography of the ever-popular Disney interpretation with the more-overt Freudian subtext of the Moliere version and brings it home with the most delightful cover of "Closer" you're ever likely to hear.

Zilly Lilly is so expressive and joyful that you are immediately sold on Disney Belle(tm) as she skips onstage to "Something There." It's a lovely deception...maybe this will be be a demure striptease on the modest side of things.  Then the instantly-identifiable opening notes of every stripper's favorite Nine Inch Nails song hit, and you know that demure this will not be.

The masterstroke here is the vocal edit on the NIN track, replacing Trent Reznor's vocals with a sunny, spry match of the tune which leads into it. The disparity between the expected and the delivered creates a frisson of cognitive dissonance that pulls you through Lilly's wonderful stage work which always manages to maintain a fundamental aspect of the animated Belle while also playing into that aforementioned Freudian interpretation.

If that version of "Closer" ever gets commercially released, it will be an instant download for me.

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