As Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton enthuses, Brie Larson's rendition of Toronto rock quartet Metric's "Black Sheep" while in character as Envy Adams (Scott Pilgrim's ex-girlfriend and lead singer of the wildly successful band The Clash at Demonhead) in the 2010 film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a show-stealer. It's rare for an actress to match a professional singer's vocal prowess, but Larson provides a memorable cover by playing up on the level of sassiness, and alternating between angst and seduction (whereas Emily Haines' rendition embodies a more traditional rock vibe and comes with a more cryptic undertone).
The song has an interesting backstory as well - it did not make the cut for Metric's fourth album Fantasies (2009) because Haines and her bandmates couldn't figure out the meaning of what they'd spontaneously created:
"'Black Sheep' was always an unusual number. It went through various road tests and revisions throughout the making of our album Fantasies. It was a real banger live, but it didn't make the cut, mostly because no one, including me, could get a handle on what the hell the song was about. I wrote the lyrics all at once in this full-on stream-of-consciousness moment and I couldn't explain where all the imagery was coming from. It was plucked from the unknown. 'Now that the truth is just a rule that you can bend/You crack the whip, shape-shift and trick the past again.' Come again? To make matters worse, I insisted that the song begin with a creepy chanting intro. I had the whole band in the vocal booth whispering the words 'black sheep come home' without knowing why."
-Songfacts
The song thankfully saw the light of day when the film's director Edgar Wright and music supervisor Nigel Godrich learned the band was Bryan Lee O'Malley's inspiration for The Clash at Demonhead, and they requested that Metric contribute a song to the film's soundtrack. The film helps clarify the song's meaning: the price of achieving worldly success at great odds, which comes with the cost of estrangement from former friends and the pruning of emotional connections:
'Got balls of steelGot an automobileFor a minimum wageGot real estateI'm buying it all up in outer spaceNow that the truth is just a rule that you can bendYou crack the whip, shape-shift and trick, the past again[Hook 2]I'll send you my love on a wireLift you up, every timeEveryone, oohPulls a way, oohIt's a mechanical bull, the number oneYou'll take a ride from anyoneEveryone wants a ridePulls away, ooh from you'
Lyrics: Genius
