Public Domain: Ray Angry (left) and Katherine McMahon (right). Photo by Sasha Charoensub.
Ray Angry and Katherine McMahon have shared "#Toyland," a new song and video, as part of their ongoing, collaborative project, Public Domain. In the new release, Angry reinterprets a track of the same name (sans hashtag) from Glen MacDonough's 1903 Christmas operetta, Babes in Toyland.
Where the original is a whistful, dreamy showtune, Angry's rendition is a bombastic and stylish soul song, helped along by a star-studded cast of characters: drums from Questlove, guitar from Pino Palladino, two verses from Black Thought, a chorus from Liv Warfield, backing vocals from Marcus King, and horns from the Dap Kings.
"#Toyland," like every Public Domain release, explores cyclical generational changes and the concept of ownership by molding a work of art whose copyright has expired into our contemporary zeitgeist.
Watch the song's colorful video treatment, directed by Tatjana Krstevski, below.
