Cover me!

[tahnan]

An addendum to the previous entry: poking around for info on the Richard Thompson cover of Britney, I came across this list of the 50 best covers of all time. You won't agree with all of it; that's not the point, of course. But I poked around and found clips of some of these, and I have to say, they've picked some interesting ones.

A few highlights, other than Thompson: Ryan Adams's cover of Oasis's "Wonderwall", a song I always found horridly whiny, but which is suddenly bluesy and plaintive ("Noel Gallagher was so impressed, he now performs Adams's version of his own song in concert"); The Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane", which I think ought to be in the top ten (and which is also a cover, I have heard, of which the original artist said that this was the way it should have sounded); Nouvelle Vague's "Just Can't Get Enough"; Gary Jules's "Mad World"--which of course I've heard, and quite like, but I had no idea it was a cover, and hearing the original technopop by Tears for Fears made me twitch; Aretha's "Respect", which is the best sort of cover, one where you can't imagine that someone else ever could have done it first.

And just for temvald:

9 Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters, 2004

Orig. Pink Floyd, 1979

Only divine inspiration could explain how, or why, New York's bendiest band came to pop Pink Floyd's balloon of pretension by re-recording their most horribly self-regarding song in the style of the Saturday Night Fever-era Bee Gees. At once cold, sexy and relentlessly danceable, it far outshines the original in both concept and execution.

(And Johnny Cash's "One", not his "Hurt"? Huh.)

Comments

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

far outshines the original? That, uh, doesn't entirely match my view of it.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Oh, rest assured, it doesn't match Temvald's, either. I find it hilarious, though. (Did we have this conversation in another entry? Anyway.) It's the nature of this sort of thing that the editors are bound to have some nigh-heretical moment of taste. There was a book of the hundred worst rock songs of all time, put out by the editors of Rolling Stone, and the much-beloved "Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton was on the list, accompanied by much vitriol. (I should hunt down a copy of that book.)

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

We may have had the conversation before, I'm reasonably sure I mentioned having heard the Scissor Sisters cover and being hard-pressed not to chew my own arm off. There's a lovely cover of _Wonderwall_ by the Mike Flowers Pops -- think Oasis in the style of a lounge band... if you want to hear it, let me know...

I'm mildly surprised you didn't know _Mad World_ was a cover, but I guess Tears For Fears never really made it in the US. I had forgotten, if I knew in the first place, that _Tainted Love_ was a cover.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, Tears for Fears did fairly well over here--at least, Songs from the Big Chair did, and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is definitely a Song Of My Childhood(tm). That particular one, however, I had not heard.

"Tainted Love", on the other hand, while I hadn't known it was a cover for the first, er, however many years I knew it, I did learn was a cover a while back. I probably looked it up the first time I heard the longer version, in which they drift into "Where Did Our Love Go?" by the Supremes.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Ah, right, evidently _The Hurting_ (first album, from which _Mad World_ came, didn't hit quite as high.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Um. I don't suppose 'Rasputin' made the list. (:

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

scissor sisters performed that on SNL last season. it was, as you can imagine, nightmarish.

[colorwheel.livejournal.com]

the look that came over temvald's face that day we were sitting at the office and the song came on? priceless.

[leighjen.livejournal.com]

I can just see the squished frog look slowly spreading across his face!!!

[marith.livejournal.com]

*peers at list* And where is "Blinded by the Light", is what I wanna know.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Very good point--that's a song that improved drastically when Mannfred Mann got their hands on it.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I'd rather hear the Scissor Sisters version. So there.

Interesting list. I'd put Aretha at #1 myself, but their #1 is certainly a reasonable pick. I *love* that they put PSB's cover of Willie at #2 -- it's a brilliant song originally and a brilliant reimagining of it. If you're going to do a remake, do it differently enough that you're not going to get killed by comparisons to the original.

Not enough R&B on the list for my taste -- I'd remedy that by including, for example, the Spinners' "Working My Way Back to You" or Luther Vandross's "A House Is Not a Home" or "Superstar". But it was certainly interesting reading.

-- Trip

[thedan.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of #26 myself.

But most importantly, I beleive this settles my position in the long-running "Who sings the best version of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'" argument. Ha!

[thedan.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I have about a million favorite cover songs, but they include:

System of a Down - "Metro" (orig. Berlin)
The Replicants - "Just What I Needed" (orig. The Cars)
The Darkness - "Street Spirit" (orig. Radiohead)
Idlewild - "Girls and Boys" (orig. The Cure)
Self - "Let's Pretend We're Married" (orig. Prince)

I tend to like a lot of eighties pop songs but wish the guitars were louder, and generally when rock bands cover them these days that's what they do.

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

i am still staunchly john cale. i mean, the jeff buckley is very good, but the john cale sings to me.

the worst: bono.

[temvald.livejournal.com]

john cale totally. that i can tell, just about every cover of hallelujah now--and there have been a lot in the past few years--uses his arrangement. except for bono's. i guess you have to give him credit for trying.

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

i guess you have to give him credit for trying.

no. no i don't. maybe you haven't heard it recently enough, but let me remind you that it S U C K S.

[bendix.livejournal.com]

great list. My two submissions are Shawn Colvin's version of Talking Heads' "Naive Melody" (as our wedding guests know!) and Annie Lennox's "Waiting in Vain", so different from Bob Marley.

I'm going to have fun with this CD project, I can tell.

[temvald.livejournal.com]

they like the byrds' cover of 'mr. tambourine man' too, which clearly shows that this article was written to be offensie rather than enlightening.

i have to say that the scissor sisters' cover is at least impressive as performance art. i mean, you can't make something that wrong by accident.