I like this one quite a lot more, thank you for sharing it! I think it also helped me realize what it was about version 1 that put me off: It wasn't what I'm going to call the "ping pong note bending," because that was still pretty clearly present here, it was the way it was used for what felt like every sustained note instead of as an accent like it is in version 2. Rather than being the majority of the notes, those bends feel more like they're being used to wrap up musical phrases in version 2, so it flows together more cleanly to my ear.