When M83 originally released “Midnight City” not too long ago, many were blown away by it's excellence and a cover of it was simply unheard of. As usual, however, The Knocks did the unheard of and covered “Midnight City” and did so beautifully. When M83 did their recording of the lyrics they used a male vocalist and heavily effected the sound to make it fit in he sounds deep layered sound. The Knocks, on the other hand, used a female vocalist to do their lyrics and made her voice more subtle sounding. They both kept the same medium tempo/speed, but used different ways of instrumentation to keep the beat driving. They both used their vox-style synths and drums, but the Knocks version relied more on their kick drum to do most of the driving than M83 chose to do. The Knocks cover keeps true to M83's original melody just give it a little spin of their own to give it a brighter feel. The achieved this by using a slightly different instrumentation and by not adding as many effects to their layers to achieve a thinner sound than M83's (but still deep nonetheless). M83 used voice, drum set, synths, and a saxophone. The Knocks took a more simple route and used voice, synths (with different settings), and a drum pad. They both have a very intense feel to them, but M83's is darker sounding while The Knock's is uplifting. Both versions of the song follow the same organization, whereas they both start off with the intro that leads into the chorus, which is followed by a verse, which is followed by another chorus, another verse, and ends with a chorus. Each chorus has small elements added to add to their complexity and intensity. In terms of elements of sound, both had a complex tonal timbre to them and a loud intensity, Regarding pitch, M83's took a lower sound to it while The Knocks was higher.
If I had to pick my favorite, it was a very hard choice, but I would have to pick M83's version because it was their unique idea in the first place and if they would have never made their song The Knocks would have never been able to do their cover version of it.
