3 posts tagged “cover versions”
This not improving my mood
We must burn all copies of this before it infects others.
OH GOD, it's spreading. We're too late! Oh the humanity!
I honestly cannot decide which of these is worse - all involved must be killed. It is a moral imperative.
via Billy and this BBC News article about the worst cover songs ever.
So as promised last week - another cover version that I not only think is better than the original.
For me that's a group that includes, amongst others, "All along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix and slightly more obscurely, Faith No More's version of "Easy". I have no formal criteria as to which covers I'll like or not but, if forced, I'd say that in general (and in no way is this a definitive and final cut) I'd have to say that it has to provide an alternative take on, for want of a different word, the narrative. That said, although I like Joss Stone's deliciously sleazy sounding version of "Fell in love with a Girl" I still prefer the freneticism of the original. And, whilst I love Johnny Cash's "Hurt" (and the astounding Mark Romanek video that goes with it) I'd have to go with Nine Inch Nails every time.
Slightly more controversially is the version of "Hallelujah" by John Cale.
Personally I'd argue with anyone, sober or drunk, that Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is very possibly the best song ever written. Period. It's not for nothing that it's one of the most covered songs ever or that it seems to be endlessly used in film and tv soundtracks - it's almost as if it's become a acoustic semiotic trigger for melancholy gravitas, joining that library of other audio standards like the Wilhelm Scream, the Red-tailed Hawk and that nouveau cliché the "Requiem for a Tower" theme (itself a cover of Clint Mansell's original score for "Requiem for a Dream").
And why is it so good? Well, with 15 possible verses to choose from it becomes a musical Rorschach test - pick the ones you want and craft the meaning. It can be sad, happy, repentant, angry. It can be spiritual and it can definitely be sexy (what precisely did you think "I remember when I moved in you and the Holy Ghost was moving too and every breath we drew was Hallelujah" actually meant?) or it can be any or all of them at the same time.
And it's one of those songs, like "Where did you sleep last Night", that's almost always good but which, when performed by some people becomes something else entirely, that transcends merely good and becomes downright extraordinary - life changing even.
Now some people will already be up in arms that I've said the cover is better than Leonard Cohen's original. Other's will be throwing a hissy fit that I haven't chosen that Rufus Wainwright's version is the best (even if it's clearly inspired by the Cale version) or, more likely, that I should have chosen Jeff Buckley's ethereal take on the song which is far more fragile than Cale's altogether more muscular treatment. Other's will champion Alison Crowe's or Imogen Heap's or the Dresden Doll's and that's their right but, for more, John Cale's version strikes exactly that right balance of hope, and anger and bitterness for me - mainly because I'm the kind of person who hopes to be angry and bitter in their old age.
Either way, I strongly urge you to read Brian Appleyard's article from the Sunday Times which describes it all far better than I could and which ends with the beautifully apropos description - Erotic failure never felt so good.
There are very few songs where the cover is better than the original - I have a list in my head, as I'm sure do you, and in all probability they don't match up. And, you know what? I'm ok with that. I really am.
I'm not even sure that this
Some songs transcend brilliance. I like songs - I like songs that move me and that get stuck in my head and make me feel, but I won't pretend that all the songs I like are to everyone's taste. But if you don't like this song, or, indeed, next week's 90s Music Monday (which is incidentally also a cover version that I happen to think is better than the original) then you're just plain wrong.
Unless you subscribe to the conspiracy theories then something was clearly wrong with Kurt Cobain around this time. It'd be impossible to speculate how he felt at the time. Without getting too melodramatic he was depressed, back on heroin and crushed by the weight the celebrity he despised and the pressures of being a role model and a brand and an icon for a generation.
So I wonder (and I realise this makes me utterly morbid) how he felt having done this final song at the MTV Unplugged set. If you have the bootleg of the performance doing the rounds you hear Cobain tell the crowd "I take requests" to which various people shout out Rape Me (which I admit I would have loved to have heard), Scentless Apprentice, Bloom. Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl even start to play the opening bars of Sliver before they change their mind.
Instead they play this and it's pretty much perfect - even the muffed start to the second verse somehow highlights the fact that it's a very human song about frailty. The last verse, screamed in the style of Mark Lanegan (who introduced Cobain to the song and even got him to play guitar on his version), is raw pathos and perfectly blends anger and frustration and sadness. If I sound like I frothing here it's because I am - it's 3am and I'm tired and thoughtful and I'm pounding my tiny fists on my keyboard trying to express quite how much I love this song and how it sends shivers down my spine every single time I've heard it in the last 15 years.
So you've just stood up having played this set and you're wandering into the backstage area. Do you realise that you've just sung one of the most incredible songs ever recorded (never let it be said I don't like hyperbole)? And if you do how does it make you feel? Does self-criticality prevent you from appreciating it? Or are you just so jaded from, well, everything, that you're just numb to the fact?
If you think I'm over hyping the song - if you think that it's just a good song that nigh impossible to do badly - if you want evidence to how much they killed it in that set then go listen to the Lanegan version again. Go listen to this version by Nicole Atkins at SXSW. They're good, sure, but they're not sublime. They're not life alteringly good. They are not listen to this on repeat continuously for 4 hours good.
When you're done listening to them go sit in a darkened room and listen to the Nirvana version again. Hell listen to the whole album. For maximum effect sit on the floor, preferably wooden, with no one around. Swig from a bottle of whisky eschewing the sordidly bourgeois notion of using a glass. Repeat until you get it. Then do it some more just to be sure.
