Any Suggestions?
October 10th, 2005Today I was thinking about songs where I like the less famous remake to the original. Here are the only two I’ve come up with so far:
Hurt – Johnny Cash over Trent Reznor
Happiness is a Warm Gun – The Breeders over the Beatles
October 12th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
that Carpenters song that Sonic Youth covers.
October 12th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
by the way, i think you left out a word (prefer?) in the first sentence of this post. also, what about some posts about typefaces?
October 13th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
I liked Fiona Apple’s version of “Across The Universe” better than Lennon’s. Yeah, I said it!
Also, The Gourd’s version of “Gin and Juice” though I guess that’s a kinda jokey one.
I like Ray Charles cover version of the Helvetica typeface.
October 14th, 2005 at 5:53 am
I Don’t Like Mondays- Tori Amos over Boomtown Rats. Tori’s whole cover album is wonderful, even though I still like Tom Waits’s Time better than hers.
October 14th, 2005 at 9:41 am
“Blinded By the Light” – Manfred Mann over Springsteen.
Good topic Mitchums.
October 14th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
thanks, dudes.
Good choice with the Sonic Youth’s “Superstar” which should be called “Don’t You Remember You Told Me You Loved Me, Baby?” except that that whould be an insane title.
I don’t know that Tori Amos song, Baer, but I do know her “Smells like Teen Spirit” which (of course) is not as good as Nirvana.
October 15th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
I like the Fiona Apple “Across the Universe” but I’m not sure if it’s better in my mind than the Beatles. Maybe it is and I’m so used to the Beatles version. Like with the Breeders, Fiona seems to “get” the point of the song more than the Beatles themselves (in the case of “H.I.A.W.G”=manic chaos, in the case of “A.T.U”=haunting ballad). Maybe if they took the flange off of Lennon’s voice it would work better, take the cheesy pschedelia quotiant down a bit.
October 17th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
Good topic indeed. My commentulas:
I disagree on “Happiness is a Warm Gun”. The Breeders version is really good, but I feel that the original is really gooder.
I don’t know whether it is necessarily less famous, but I love the Stevie Wonder version of “We Can Work It Out” by the Beatles.
Patti Smith’s version of “My Generation” makes me want to jump up and shake one fist–if not two.
I think that I prefer Come’s version of the Rolling Stones song “I Got the Blues” to the original. Not sure that the original is so super-famous, but it’s more famous than the cover, at any rate.
Soundgarden’s cover of Black Sabbath’s “Into the Void” is pretty rock-tastic, as is Faith No More’s cover of “War Pigs”.
I always liked that Jane’s Addiction version of the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple”.
The Ozzy Osbourne version of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” is fun, but I admit to liking the original too much for Ozzy to win.
And now, to change the topic slightly, here are some less famous covers that I put on equal footing with the original. I think that this is a relatively rare category. If the cover is just a rehash, it tends to suck. If it’s a reworking, the original might have sucked, or the revision is too famous to be included in this category. So, to have an actual reworking that succeeds where the original also succeeded, but where the cover remains less famous, you need a special alignment of planets. “Jesus, get your own blog,” is what my brain would be thinking if it were in your skull. Sorry.
Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” and the original Rolling Stones version, though they are of course completely different things. One I listen to when I’m drivin’ in my car, and the other when I am dancin’ with my robot.
U2′s “Promenade” and the cover by Calla. Both lovely.
M. Ward’s and David Bowie’s versions of “Let’s Dance” are differently super.
Bob Dylan’s “Highway ’61 Revisited” is nice in the hands of PJ Harvey.
And now another change of topic. It has always pissed me off that in U2′s live cover of “Helter Skelter” on Rattle and Hum, Bono–in all three instances of the lyric–sings, “you ain’t no lover but you ain’t no dancer” instead of the correct lyric, “you may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer”. First off, it doesn’t make sense. Secondly, he has his little preachy bit at the top where he says “This is a song Charles Manson stole from The Beatles. We’re stealing it back.” This silly and pretentious implication that they are the agents of The Beatles, coupled with the fact that they botch the lyric gets me crazy. Crazy, I say. Am I to conclude that, during the time that the song was in the possession of Mr. Manson, the lyrics were altered, so that the heroic members of U2 were only able to come back to Abbey Road with a bruised version of the kidnapped baby? And then there’s that heavy breathing he does at the end of the song, which just makes me reach for the haldol.
If you are really interested in spending your entire day plumbing the depths of this topic, visit:
http://www.coversproject.com
December 28th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
good work, doc!
i always hated that U2 helter skelter intro, so thanks for breaking it down for me.
and jane’s addiction’s ripple is definitely more ripply than the original.