Unanswerable Question
I was listening to an oldies station and they played Phil Collins' "You Can't Hurry Love." Why would anyone do that when they could just as easily play the original by The Supremes?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:22 AM
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7 Comments:
I never got cover versions that just copied the original and come off as a pale carbon copy (no racial allusion intended but it works anyway). Phil Collins voice is not distinctive enough to make it sound like a new song and he doesn't seem to do anything new to the arrangement. Just seemed like he was cashing in on a previously popular song. Really Al Yankovic does this better and he's occasionally funny
Some performers (Johnny Cash's American recordings come to mind) have such a style that his covers are always worth hearing but I have always preferred different styles of familiar songs (The Lemon Head's [I think] grittier metal version of "Luka" or the Dickies version of "Knights in White Satin" are two I can think of ). I had a religious friend in high school who liked "Stairway to Heaven" but disapproved of grungy rockers and the Led Zeppelin vocals- he wanted a Barbara Streisand version - I'm still shuddering.
Now going completely off on a tangent-I even like the Crewcuts cover of "Sh-boom" despite its provenance- its a completely different song( in a pop-song, not legal, sense) and much more hyper than its more soulful source. Also, although I blame this on having heard the cover first, I've always preferred Elton John's "Pinball Wizard"- The Who's version sounds too subdued after the over-the-top histrionics in the 70s offering.
In the 50s there were a lot of white covers of black singers. A rare case where the cover was better was "Little Darlin'" by The Diamonds, where they just made fun of the song. Of course, Elvis did some decent covers.
Sorry, New England Guy, but I can't agree with you on "Pinball Wizard." At least, however, I can listen to Elton John's version. Compare that to his cover of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds."
Elton John's "Lucy" belongs in the same category as Phil Collins discussed above.
For pure comedic value, there are no better covers than Leonard Nimoy's. For actual creative re-invention, Alien Ant Farm's "Smooth Criminal" and Johnny Cash's "Hurt" set the standard for me. I'm told that Trent Reznor said he'd never heard a cover of one of his songs he could stand until that one.
I'm a hardcore Genesis fan, and even though my preference is early Genesis, I like Phil Collins too (unlike many other prog-rock fans). And I really liked his ICHL when it came out. Then I heard the Supremes version and thought, this is ridiculous. If the music industry was willing to re-release old records, the original would have made all the money he just did.
The only good cover songs are ones that significantly alter the original. There are two kinds. First, there are folk-rock songs (e.g., early Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell) that just don't have much of a musical arrangement. So when Judy Collins re-does "Both Sides Now", or Neil Diamond re-does "Chelsea Morning", or Jimi Hendrix does "All Along the Watchtower", they are adding instrumentation to a skeletal song.
The other kind is a re-do of a full song, in a totally different arrangement. Deep Purple's awesome cover of "Help!" is a perfect example. Take a listen -- if you only know the later heavy metal Deep Purple, it will astonish you.
You want a Supremes cover that matters? Vanilla Fudge doing "You Keep Me Hanging On".
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