What makes a great cover song? I don’t mean just the myriad of good cover songs out there, but the really stand-out cover songs.
These are a few of my favorite covers. First, a handful of "special categories," because I'm sneaky like that.
Special category one-Groups or singers who have made a habit of recording really great cover songs, while being not-at-all bad songwriters themselves:
Everything But The Girl-I Don't Want To Talk About It, Love Is Strange and The Only Living Boy In New York
Pet Shop Boys:-If Love Were All, Always On My Mind, Losing My Mind (w/Liza Minelli), Where the Streets Have No Name/I Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You and Try It (I'm In Love With A Married Man)
Kirsty MacColl-A New England, Miss Otis Regrets, You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby, Days and Perfect Day
UB40-Red Red Wine, I Got You Babe and all the singles off Labour of Love II.
Paul Young-Love Will Tear Us Apart, Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home), Everytime You Go Away, I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down and Soldier's Things
Special Category two-the great cover albums:
Red Hot + Blue-Kirsty, U2, Salif Keita, and more singing Cole Porter.
Silicon Teens-Music For Parties. Synth cover versions of old '50s and '60s tunes.
Stay Awake: Various Interpretaions of Music from Vintage Disney Films
Twentieth Century Blues: The Songs of Noel Coward
Reggatta Mondatta: The Police Reggae Tribute
Special Category Three: It's long been a maxim of mine that covers have a moral obligation to piss off fans of the original, or at least to have that capacity.
Breakfast Club-Drive My Car and Expressway To Your Heart.
Laptop-It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me. It's so deadpan.
Fine Young Cannibals-Ever Fallen In Love. Maybe things have changed, but at the time I remember everybody hating this.
Special Category Four-Covers that made me like songs I previously wanted nothing to do with:
DJ Sammy & Yanou Feat Do-Heaven (Candlelight Mix). I don't have room here to go into my Bryan Adams rant...but I love this piano-based mix.
Shriekback-Get Down Tonight. Humanly impossible to disapprove, cos the Shriek keeps shrieking and the groove don't move...
Special category five: Guilty Pleasures.
Donny Osmond's Somewhere In Time CD. Shut up.
Pseudo Echo-Funkytown. Cheesy? So says you!
Now with them out of the way, The List:
Madonna-I Want You. I'll always believe in my soul that where Madonna went wrong (if you think she did) is in deciding she was a creative artist, instead of an interpretive one.
Sting-Angel Eyes. My favorite version of this classic song. From the Leaving Las Vegas soundtrack.
Thomas Dolby-I Scare Myself. This is just good. I don't know quite how else to say it.
Candy Flip-Strawberry Fields Forever. My favorite Beatles song, but I love this version too, especially the remixes.
Figures On A Beach-You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. Using a sampler for the stutter effect. So obvious, and yet so brilliant.
Bananarama-Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye. I've discussed this before-I want it played at my funeral.
Hue & Cry-Fixing A Hole. This recording of the Beatles song, done for a charity album, has always struck me as one of the best covers ever done, even outstripping the original. My tape has gone the way of all flesh and I'd love to have it replaced on CD.
Kon Kan-Puss N Boots/These Boots (Are Made For Walking) -- Classic favorite "mash-up" of Led Zeppelin with Nancy Sinatra.
Pop Will Eat Itself-Rock-A-Hula Baby. Leave it to the Poppies to turn Public Enemy's Elvis dis on its head.
Depeche Mode-Route 66. In retrospect, this was an early warning sign of the groups getting into dreary rock, which almost killed Dave and from which they've never recovered to my ears.
5 comments:
How in the world do you know about Kon Kan? They were the ultimate under-the-radar Canadian group (having flipped their name from Can. Con., short for Canadian Content, which by law, all our TV and radio stations have to devote between 30 and 60% of airtime.) But you're right, that's a kick-ass cover version.
They weren't as under-the-radar as you seem to think, at least not in California.
A couple of their singles charted in at least the top 100 and got lots of airplay on the "hip" radio stations in SF and L.A. in 1989.
They thanked a couple of the DJs in the liner notes to the album.
That "Canadian content" thing is also how we got the McKenzie Brothers, you know.
And only YOU would retain that information some 20 years after the fact...unbelievable.
Or it could be that I quickly looked up the chart information on Google, would you believe.
I see by "some 20 years" you mean 17.
Ahhh, memories...
You've got some favorites of mine on there: Get Down Tonight (Shriekback crash-landing on a KC song...), Always on My Mind, Route 66, Na Na Hey Hey. Classics, all.
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