Cover songs have a long and colored history — as long as people have been making music, other folks have been thinking they can do a better job. In most cases, it’s the original inspiration that endures and cover songs are mere imitations. But every so often a musician reinterprets and reimagines the melody, taking it to an entirely different level in the process. The following 10 songs are all recordings we think are better than the original, ranked in rough order of by how much better than the original they are.
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10. Iron & Wine / Such Great Heights
Original: Postal Service
Sam Beam isolated the mellow core of 2003’s hyperkinetic original, slowed it down, and stripped it to the bare essentials. The original Such Great Heights remains a hip techno-pop masterpiece, but after listening to both, Beam’s take is the more credible — I believe the story he tells is his own more than I do Ben Gibbard.
Many people think the Postal Service version is the cover and Iron & Wine the original, which is understandable since both were released on the same eponymous EP in advance of the the Postal Service’s LP Give Up. But it is indeed a Postal Service original.
9. Pearl Jam / Last Kiss
Original: J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers
Not Even Flow, not Better Man, not even Jeremy went as high as Pearl Jam’s 1998 cover of The Cavaliers’s 1964 hit single. The idea to cover the song came about after frontman Eddie Vedder found an old record at an Antique Mall. He convinced the rest of the band to try out the song and eventually they recorded it, spending only a couple thousand dollars mixing the tune, producing one of the band’s most minimalist recordings. It ended up reaching no. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, higher than any other Pearl Jam song, and had a similar reception abroad.
As to why Vedder was able to improve on the original, it must be something to do with his naturally morose baritone — love or loathe his voice, few can convey sadness and loss like he can. Regarding the cover, guitarist Stone Gossard said,
You can try album after album to write a hit and spend months getting drum sounds and rewriting lyrics, or you can go to a used record store and pick out a single and fall in love with it.
8. The Beatles / Twist & Shout
Original: The Isley Brothers
The Isley Brothers’s cover of the original in 1962 (the song was first recorded by The Top Notes a year earlier) made the song famous: peaked at no. 17 on Billboard’s Top 40 chart. Successful though it was, if that had been the end of it, we wouldn’t be talking about this song now. Once the Fab Four recorded a version of it for 1963’s Please Please Me, it forever entered the public consciousness.
Most people are familiar with Lennon’s smashing lead vocals, the first take of which was used for the recording. But most people don’t know the reason producer George Martin saved this song for last:
Lennon was suffering from a cold, and was drinking milk and sucking on cough drops to soothe his throat. His coughing is audible on the album, and the cold’s effect on his voice is audible in this recording. Even so, he produced a memorable vocal performance, a raucous, dynamic rocker. He later said his voice was not the same for a long time afterward, and that ‘every time [he] swallowed, it felt like sandpaper.’
7. Aimee Mann / One
Original: Three Dog Night
Aimee Mann burst on to the the scene in the 1980s as the frontwoman for the group ‘Til Tuesday. Her later solo career received much critical acclaim but little commercial success; that is, until P.T. Anderson used three of her songs on the soundtrack to his 1999 human interest drama Magnolia.
One song in particular “One”, a cover of the 1969 Three Dog Night hit (itself a Harry Nilsson cover), showcased Mann’s unique talents to a broader audience. Her gruff, melancholic voice is soothing and draws the listener more deeply into the song’s emotion than the original ever did. In fact, it made such an impression on Anderson, it may well be the reason he produced the film in the first place. In Anderson’s words:
I had a lot of ideas floating around in my head, probably too many ideas, and she’s a really good friend of mine, and was privy to stuff she was working on. It was great to have her music as a thing to latch on to, to help corral all the stuff that was sort of circling around in my brain. So I wanted to just adapt Aimee’s songs, like you would adapt a book or a play.
6. Ben Harper / Strawberry Fields Forever
Original: The Beatles
For the soundtrack to 2001’s I Am Sam, Ben Harper recorded his cover of a popular Beatles tune. And while virtually all are terrific (or at least interesting) takes on the classics, I’m going to go out on a controversial limb and assert that Harper’s actually improves on the psychedelic original. This is no small feat, since even to this day original Beatles recordings sound contemporary: there’s something timeless about Lennon & McCartney’s songwriting prowess.
Recorded in 1967 during a particularly difficult time in Lennon’s life — he was exhausted from a long tour, his marriage to Cynthia Powell was failing, and he was taking increasingly larger amounts of drugs — the song required 45 hours over 5 weeks to record and at its heart is a story of his feelings of isolation and loneliness as a child in Liverpool. Ben Harper tapped into these same feelings the way the other artists on the soundtrack didn’t, taking the melody and its meaning to a higher level.
5. The Byrds / Mr. Tambourine Man
Original: Bob Dylan
When the Byrds covered Dylan’s original and included it as the title track of their first album, it went straight to no. 1 in both the US and the UK. They got a hold of an early version of the song, before Dylan released it on his Another Side of Bob Dylan album in 1965, and as a result released it just two weeks after he did. The song is one of just three that was included twice in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, since both The Byrds’ version and Dylan’s own version are included. Both versions also received Grammy Hall of Fame Awards.
4. Matt Weddle / Hey Ya!
Original: Outkast
Outkast’s ubiquitous hit single Hey Ya! received a delicate folk makeover courtesy of Obadiah Parker frontman Mat Weddle in 2006. His open mike cover was uploaded to YouTube and quickly went viral, garnering millions of views in just a few months. Even though Andre 3000’s version was a smash hit single, spent months in the top 5 and won a Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative performance, Weddle coaxes out the central heartbreak of the song that was obscured by the original’s pop sensibility.
3. Jeff Buckley / Hallelujah
Original: Leonard Cohen
Transcendent, otherworldly, divine — we run out of superlatives quickly when it comes to Jeff Buckley’s 1994 cover of the Leonard Cohen original. And while there’s something of a cottage industry out of covering Cohen songs, few do it better. Buckley’s version is almost revelation, like the muse that originally delivered it must have gotten mixed up and visited Cohen first when it should have been Buckley all along. There’s not much we can say about this one: just listen to it. You’ll understand.
2. Michael Andrews & Gary Jules / Mad World
Original: Tears for Fears
Arranged by Michael Andrews and sung by Gary Jules, this haunting, low-fi cover version was released on the soundtrack to 2001’s Donnie Darko. Absent the pop synthesizers and high-energy percussion of the 1982 original, the Andrews/Jules version includes only a voice, a piano, and a cello. It’s much slower and simpler than the original, though more richly melodic — it was recorded first as a rough cut to see if director Richard Kelly would be interested; he ended up using that same rough cut for the soundtrack.
When the song was released as a proper single in 2003, it became a runaway hit, reaching no. 1 for a brief time in the UK — a feat the original, itself a single, never accomplished. In 2004, CNN asked Tears for Fears about Andrews/Jules cover. Frontman Roland Orzabal said they loved it; he graciously acknowledged he thought it better than his own original and that it caused the band to rethink the song.
1. Jimi Hendrix / All Along the Watchtower
Original: Bob Dylan
Really, you could take all these songs, put them in any order you like, and you’d still have a solid list so long as this song remains at #1. There’s no greater example of one artist capturing the spirit and and power of another artist’s song and breathing new life into it than Hendrix’s cover of All Along the Watchtower. He connected with it on a different plane and created something altogether new as a result.
Now, a song like this is not recorded over night: it was the result of months and months of effort. Hendrix became increasingly dissatisfied as the song progressed and overdubbed more and more guitar parts, moving the master tape from a four-track to a twelve-track to a sixteen-track machine. Sound engineer Tony Bongiovi recalled:
Recording these new ideas meant he would have to erase something. In the weeks prior to the mixing, we had already recorded a number of overdubs, wiping track after track. [Hendrix] kept saying, ‘I think I hear it a little bit differently.’
In live performances since, Dylan himself has subsequently played it more and more like Hendrix’s version. Dylan described his reaction to hearing Hendrix’s version thus:
It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.
He went on to say, “I liked Jimi Hendrix’s record of this and ever since he died I’ve been doing it that way… Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.”
Honorable Mentions:
- Nirvana / The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie)
- Dixie Chicks / Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)
- Ryan Adams / Wonderwall (Oasis)
Have you heard Beck's rendition of Dylan's "Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat?"
ReplyDeleteDylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" was released on his LP "Bringing It All Back Home," not on "Another Side of Bob Dylan." Research!
ReplyDeleteI agree on your # 1 but by no means your #5. (The voice of Mr Tambourine Man is that of a sole person, not lush harmonies!) But in any case, it's a wonder to go back to BD's Watchtower and hear Jimi in Bob's harmonica. Now THAT's powerful stuff!
ReplyDelete