Elijah Woods x Jamie Fine's stripped-down acoustic cover of Magic!'s 'Rude' will surprise you

The 2020 Junos have been cancelled since this article was first published.

"It's one of those infectious songs," says vocalist Jamie Fine. "Like, as soon as you heard it on the radio you were like, what is this?"

The song in question is Magic!'s "Rude," which she and Elijah Woods chose for their Junos 365 session.

As part of our coverage of the 2020 Juno Awards, we're inviting some of today's hottest Canadian acts to cover a past winner in the single of the year category. "Rude" won that award in 2015.

"We like to make everything a little bit slower and a little bit more push-and-pull than it needs to be," says Woods, explaining their stripped-down acoustic take on the reggae fusion hit.

Woods says he wanted their cover to focus on Fine's vocals — "she has a lot of really neat texture in her voice and my goal is just to support and augment what she's trying to do" — while his piano accompaniment re-harmonizes parts of the song.

"I think it's interesting to take a song that is so major-chord-based and introduce some chords that generally sound a little more expensive," he says.

"He always does that to every song," adds Fine. "I'll write, like, four chords on a piano. He'll be like, 'Yeah, trash, I'm gonna play better chords.' And he'll take these four chords and make them absolutely sound epic; they just pull on your heartstrings."

Watch their cover of "Rude," above.

For all of CBC Music's coverage of the 2020 Juno Awards, go to cbcmusic.ca/junos. Listen to our Junos 365 playlist collection via CBC Listen.