Post Malone Covers Hootie & the Blowfish’s ‘Only Wanna Be With You’ [Listen]
Rapper-turned-crooner Post Malone has revealed a lightly Pokémon-themed cover of Hootie and the Blowfish's 1995 soft rock classic "Only Wanna Be With You," an amalgamation of cross-generation pop culture touchstones that's perhaps as confusing as it is catchy.
The tune is part of an upcoming all-star compilation, Pokémon 25: The Album, due to be released later this year in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Japanese media franchise that's all about the fictional cartoon creatures and those who attempt to catch them. Pokémon 25: The Album will also include selections from Katy Perry, J Balvin and more, as Billboard reports.
Post Malone performed his "Only Wanna Be With You" rendition as an animated version of himself on Feb. 27 for a Pokémon Day virtual concert that was available on YouTube. We only wonder what Hootie main man and country solo artist Darius Rucker thinks about all of this.
The New York Times' Jon Caramanica likely said it best when he called the cover "both a symbol of the arbitrary cultural detritus that fifth-gear capitalism expels into the world and also an effortless, obvious merger of the roots-rock then and the arena post-rap now that suggests the conditions for this song to succeed have always been with us." And, well, just give a listen for yourself…
Listen to Post Malone's "Only Wanna Be With You":
But maybe the Hootie-Posty combo isn't as perplexing as it might appear on the surface. The 25-year-old performer who started out as a trap star has been mining the pop-rock vein in his own way on some of his more recent fare, including 2019's "Circles." To boot, "Only Wanna Be With You" sure gives Post Malone a way to stretch out his quirky vocal inflections at the end of each stanza.
The original "Only Wanna Be With You" was ubiquitous on mid-'90s radio (and beyond) as the third single from Hootie and the Blowfish's breakthrough album, 1994's Cracked Rear View. The song peaked at No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Top 40 Airplay chart on Oct. 14, 1995.