Watch France's Figure Skating Pair Perform to Disturbed at the Winter Olympics
For the 2018 Winter Olympics—which are taking place right now in PyeongChang, South Korea—the International Skating Union made the decision to allow figure skaters to use music with lyrics for their routines for the first time ever.
Throughout the week, skaters have been doing their routines to everything from Beyoncé to Japanese composer Ryuchi Sakamoto. France's Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres though, decided to go a different route. A very, very different route.
The pair decided to perform to "Sound of Silence," the classic 1964 Simon & Garfunkel hit. Rather than the original version though, the skaters chose to do their routine to Disturbed's heavily orchestrated cover of the song.
"It was our coaches who found it," James told The Associated Press. "They were like, 'We really think it could be a hit.' And Morgan listened to it and was like, 'I don't like it,' because we weren't used to it. And I was like, 'OK, let me see if I can get into this.' I thought it could be amazing, and I was like, 'Morgan, let's trust them.' And we were so right to have trusted them."
You can watch a clip from the duo's routine below.
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Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player. Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded. Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.
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