MUNA Cover Go West’s “The King Of Wishful Thinking”

Indie-pop greats MUNA have seemingly been in New York this week promoting their very satisfying new album Dancing On The Wall this week. On my run this morning, I listened to the trio's new episode of Switched On Pop, which highlighted some awesome moments in their new songs. It seems they also paid a visit to SiriusXM's studios, where they performed for SiriusXMU — notably, with OG Stereogum editor Amrit Singh's brother Sarab on drums.

A snippet of the performance shared on socials reveals the band's choice of repertoire: a cover of "King Of Wishful Thinking," Go West's glossy adult-contemporary hit from the 1990 Pretty Woman soundtrack. MUNA are one of several groups in the gap between pop and indie who've played around with late '80s and early '90s VH1 aesthetics, and this song in particular feels like a lodestar. In my book about how indie went pop, I even summed up my initial impression of the 1975 as "real 'King Of Wishful Thinking'-core." So this is an inspired choice from Katie Gavin and friends. Apparently it was on their pre-show playlist way back in 2017.

The full "King Of Wishful Thinking" is only available for subscribers in the SiriusXM app, but you can get the gist of it in the video below.

Remember when Paul Rudd and Jimmy Fallon did a shot-for-shot remake of the "King Of Wishful Thinking" video? No? What about when some unnamed member of the Stereogum staff revisited the video way back in 2007? Also no?