Covers That Beat The Originals
It’s one of popular music’s stranger mysteries that often the author of a song isn’t the person best suited to deliver it. The caliber of the writer isn’t the issue: One only needed to watch Fiona Apple’s shattering rendition of Elvis Costello’s “I Want You” on stage at a 2006 concert for VH1 to realize that, legend though he is, Declan MacManus was only the song’s second-best interpreter. Pop history is full of cases like this, where a good song becomes a great one with just a few simple tweaks. Maybe it’s an off-kilter arrangement, maybe it’s a different inflection, or maybe the singer just understands the words in a way the author didn’t. Or, as is the case in a few of these selections, maybe it’s a song that got so worn down from familiarity that it needed a new voice to bring it back to life. Each one is a little different, and each is remarkable in its own way. These are our picks for covers that surpass the originals.
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In 1979 — a decade and a half after "As Tears Go By" made her famous — former or present Jagger girlfriend, Stones songwriter, heroin addict, anorexia victim, homeless actress and descendent of Austrian aristocracy Marianne Faithfull returned from the abyss with Broken English, which at its very best was one of the most uncompromised mergers of punk, disco and reggae ever concocted. That "very best" mainly means two songs: The cryptic album-opening title track, supposedly inspired by the Baader-Meinhof Gang though one could easily hear it for three decades without picking up on that (what you always figured was "It's just a mugwump/ not even a car wash" turns out to be "It's just an old war/ not even a cold war"!) and the near-seven-minute closer "Why D'ya Do It," simply one of the most viciously ball-breaking spurned-woman tirades ever recorded: "Why'd ya do what ya said? Why'd ya do what ya did?" repeated obsessively, with increasing nastiness, through a throat scarred by laryngitis and white powder, climaxing with unmentionable male and female body parts named outright in a frighteningly pissed-off manner, as louder-and-louder axe jolts curdle into concentric rhythm. In 1979, the closest musical comparison was, oh, maybe Lene Lovich. But these songs sound even more like a blueprint for Sly-and-Robbie-era '80s Grace Jones (starting with Warm Leatherette, released on the same label, Island, a year later), not to mention much music made since by Chrissie Hynde, Polly Harvey, Courtney Love and Ashlee Simpson.
more »The album has three other numbers that are difficult to forget: "Witches' Song," a Wiccan ritual that presages much of Faithfull's later Teutonic cabaret ice-queen leanings; a cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero," which she pulls of swimmingly despite apparently lacking life experience in the subject matter; and Shel Silverstein's "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan," which despite comprising not much more than her singing and a lone synth pulse is most likely the greatest track ever made about a woman (in this case, a depressed 37-year-old hausfrau) psychologically cracking up. Which leaves three more songs that nobody ever talks about: "Brain Drain," a passable sort of straight blues ballad partly about going broke and written by her husband at the time, Vibrators bassist Ben Brierley; "Guilt," a dirge about confessing to uncommitted-as-yet sins that winds up stretching out into a instrumental portion that somewhat anticipates the yuppie sports-bar atmosphere Steve Winwood scored big with in the '80s (he's playing keyboards); and finally "What's The Hurry," another mix of rock guitar shocks, art-disco bass, and dub-reggae space not far from production on certain Kate Bush records still on the horizon. Real good, most of it. And Faithfull's never managed an album half as compelling since.
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By all means a phenomenal pop album that hit number nine on the black albums chart and crossed over to penetrate the pop charts at number 32, Nightclubbing saw Grace Jones working once again with Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, and the remainder of the Compass Point team. Nightclubbing also continues Jones' tradition of picking excellent songs to reinterpret. This time out, the Police's "Demolition Man," Bill Withers' "Use Me," and Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing" receive radical reinterpretations; "Nightclubbing" is glacial in both tempo and lack of warmth, while both "Use Me" and "Demolition Man" fit perfectly into Jones' lyrical scheme. Speaking of a lyrical scheme, "Pull Up to the Bumper" (number five black singles, number two club play) is so riddled with naughty double entendres -- or is it just about parallel parking? -- that it renders Musique's "In the Bush" as daring as Paul Anka's "Puppy Love." Drive it in between what, Grace? It's not just lyrics that make the song stick out; jingling spirals of rhythm guitar and a simplistic, squelching, mid-tempo rhythm make the song effective, even without considering Jones' presence. Sly & Robbie provide ideal backdrops for Jones yet again, casting a brisk but not bristly sheen over buoyant structures. Never before and never since has a precisely chipped block of ore been so seductive.
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The titles say it all: "I Wanted Everything," "Don't Come Close," "I'm Against It," "Questioningly." Road to Ruin: with Tommy gone from the lineup (but still on hand as co-producer), Marky just getting comfortable on the drum throne, and Johnny planting the flag for fundamentalist caution, the Ramones founder a bit on their 1978 album, but still manage to come through with the epochal "I Wanna Be Sedated," the delightful "She's the One" and a heartfelt cover of the Searchers' "Needles & Pins." The bonus tracks include the strong live medley and theme song recorded for the band's Hollywood star turn, Rock'n'Roll High School.
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Orphans is so chock-a-block full of Tom Waits trademarks — bangings, clangings, swamp hollers, jailbreak recipes, hobo manifestos, starlit waltzes, dime-store valentines, last-call singalongs — that it's easy to overlook how seriously out of character it is: For the first time in the 33 years he's been making records, Waits is looking backward instead of forward, honing instead of innovating. And yet what could have been just a simple career-spanning collection of outtakes, B-sides and compilation tracks has sprawled into something weirdly akin to a statement: an instruction manual for how his mind works, a voluntary sheaf of contact sheets.
more »Disc one, "Brawlers," dismembers rockabilly, juke-joint blues and gospel testifiers with Waits' usual avant-garde aplomb, muddling obsolete sounds and progressive visions; "Road to Peace," a chilling, moaned snapshot of failed Israeli-Palestinian relations, is the sole effort to rise out of the atemporal stew and attach itself to current events. Disc two, "Bawlers," offers an embarrassment of sentimental riches: unabashed odes to natural wonders ("You Can Never Hold Back Spring"), corner-bar breakup ballads ("It's Over"), banjo-plucking moongazers ("Shiny Things") and a pedal-steel-draped take on a pop standard ("Young at Heart"). Disc three, "Bastards," collects compilation rarities like Kurt Weill's "What Keeps Mankind Alive," an industrial-hell version of Disney's "Heigh Ho" and the classic-car monologue "The Pontiac."
Liberated — at least for the time being — from the tremendous, self-imposed pressure to be inventive all the time, Waits is pinning himself down instead of propelling himself onward. But the quality is so stunningly high throughout, the scale so overwhelming and the scope so ambitious, that the slight air of redundancy vanishes on the breeze.
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Franklin had already been recording for more than a decade when she moved to Atlantic Records, teamed up with Jerry Wexler — who had the brilliant idea of getting her to play piano — and a crew of Southern soul musicians, and released this 1967 landmark. It became the blueprint for the next seven years of her career: its devotional title track and the gale-force cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" were the immediate hits, but the whole thing sketched out the new Aretha as a passionate, demanding lover whose passion and demands also spoke to the politics of black America, and who explicitly cast herself in the tradition of master pop singers brought up on gospel.
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Probably the band's most famous release in the English-speaking world, Laibach's Let It Be -- unlike the Replacements' album -- didn't just name itself after the Beatles' swan song, it full-on covered every last bit of it, with the notable exception of the title track ("Maggie Mae" gets a Slovenian folk tune substituted for it). Having spent some time beforehand drawing any number of parallels of right-wing extremism with their home country's government and the West alike, especially when it came to the resemblance of big rock concerts to totalitarian rallies, all Laibach had to do was tackle what they felt was the Beatles' worst album. In some respects, Let It Be wasn't that hard of an effort -- songs like "Get Back," "I Me Mine," and "One After 909" simply had to have the Laibach elements applied (growled vocals, martial drums, chanting choirs, overpowering orchestrations, insanely over-the-top guitar solos) to be turned into bizarre doppelgängers. The sheer creepiness of hearing such well-known songs transformed, though, is more than enough reason to listen in -- "Dig It" in particular becomes a full-on Third Reich chant, only to be trumped by the meta-metal fake-live recording blast of "I've Got a Feeling." In a more subtle way, "Across the Universe" easily trumps the original, only a female choir, harpsichord, and organ turning it into a disturbed anthem of acquiescence. Meanwhile, other efforts like "Two of Us" have a smooth, strong passion to their arrangements -- the sheer appeal of the commanding delivery in its own way helps explain the appeal of stage-managed demonstrations and performance. It's a joke endlessly folded in on itself, a killing joke and then some. Happily, it's just as funny as it is disturbing, and points for the hilariously unsettling cover art as well.
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Despite a handful of classic pop singles, Saint Etienne's debut album Foxbase Alpha is a tentative fusion of club culture and swinging '60s pop. Lead vocalist Sarah Cracknell hasn't been fully integrated into the band's lineup -- she doesn't even sing on their astonishing Euro-disco cover of Neil Young's "Only Love Will Break Your Heart," which is not only cleverly ironic, but also works -- yet the filler remains thoroughly enjoyable, even if it rarely reaches the heights of the irresistible girl group pop of "Kiss and Make Up."
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As the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) had done a year earlier, Super Session (1968) initially ushered in several new phases in rock & roll's concurrent transformation. In the space of mere months, the soundscape of rock shifted radically from two- and three-minute danceable pop songs to comparatively longer works with more attention to technical and musical subtleties. Enter the unlikely all-star triumvirate of Al Kooper (piano/organ/ondioline/vocals/guitars), Mike Bloomfield (guitar), and Stephen Stills (guitar) -- all of whom were concurrently "on hiatus" from their most recent engagements. Kooper had just split after masterminding the definitive and groundbreaking Child Is Father of the Man (1968) version of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Bloomfield was fresh from a brief stint with the likewise brass-driven Electric Flag, while Stills was late of Buffalo Springfield and still a few weeks away from a more or less full-time commitment to David Crosby and Graham Nash. Although the trio never actually performed together, the long-player was notable for idiosyncratically featuring one side led by the team of Kooper/Bloomfield and the other by Kooper/Stills. The band is ably fleshed out with the powerful rhythm section of Harvey Brooks (bass) and Eddie Hoh (drums) as well as Barry Goldberg (electric piano) on "Albert's Shuffle" and "Stop." The heavy Chicago blues contingency of Bloomfield, Brooks, and Goldberg provide a perfect outlet for the three Kooper/Bloomfield originals -- the first of which commences the project with the languid and groovy "Albert's Shuffle." The guitarist's thin tone cascades with empathetic fluidity over the propelling rhythms. Kooper's frisky organ solo alternately bops and scats along as he nudges the melody forward. The same can be said of the funky interpretation of "Stop," which had originally been a minor R&B hit for Howard Tate. Curtis Mayfield's "Man's Temptation" is given a brass-fuelled soulful reading that might have worked equally well as a Blood, Sweat & Tears cover. At over nine minutes in spin time, "His Holy Modal Majesty" is a fun trippy waltz and includes one of the most extended jams on the Kooper/Bloomfield side. The track also features the distinct hurdy-gurdy and Eastern-influenced sound of Kooper's small electric keyboard-manipulated ondioline, which has a slightly atonal and reedy timbre much like that of John Coltrane's tenor sax. Because of some physical health issues, Bloomfield was unable to complete the recording sessions and Kooper contacted Stills. Immediately his decidedly West Coast sound -- which alternated from a chiming Rickenbacker intonation to a faux pedal steel -- can be heard on the upbeat version of Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." One of the album's highlights is the churning and scintillating cover of "Season of the Witch." There is an undeniable synergy between Kooper and Stills, whose energies seems to aurally drive the other into providing some inspired interaction. Updating the blues standard "You Don't Love Me" allows Stills to sport some heavily amplified and distorted licks, which come off sounding like Jimi Hendrix. This is one of those albums that seems to get better with age and that gets the full reissue treatment every time a new audio format comes out. This is a super session indeed.
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Bill Frisell has long been one of the most unique guitarists around. Able to switch on a moment's notice from sounding like a Nashville studio player to heavy metal, several styles of jazz, and just pure noise, Frisell can get a remarkable variety of sounds and tones out of his instrument. This set features Frisell in a quintet with Don Byron (on clarinet and bass clarinet), Guy Klucevsek on accordion, bassist Kermit Driscoll, and drummer Joey Baron. To call the repertoire wide-ranging would be an understatement. In addition to eight melodies from Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid, Frisell and company explore (and often reinvent) pieces written by Charles Ives, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, Madonna, Sonny Rollins, Stephen Foster, and John Phillip Sousa. This is one of the most inventive recordings of the 1990s and should delight most listeners from any genre.
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A collision of post-punk, dub, and girl group pop, Anika is defined by its namesakes voice. Anika's stiff Teutonic alto evokes not just the ultimate German ice princess Nico, but the brazen haughtiness of punks like Malaria! and Mania D. Backed by Portishead's Geoff Barrow and the rest of BEAK> -- whom she met while working as a music promoter -- she uses the near-robotic aloofness of her voice to brilliant effect on wisely chosen covers and a handful of originals. BEAK>'s inspired minimalism is the perfect foil for her deadpan cool, and in many ways Anika feels like a more focused, feminine second album from the band. Like BEAK>'s debut, this album was recorded in just a dozen days; Barrow's production sounds like Joe Meek dabbling in dub, and Billy Fuller's inventive basslines nearly steal the spotlight from Anika more than once. Yet Anika is far more subversive than BEAK> could be on their own. Many of the albums best moments happen when Anika lends her avant-garde chill to 60s girl group singles: in her hands, Twinkle's morbid biker love song Terry is sleek, sardonic, and a little bit eerie; atonal edges and angles trade innocence for nihilism on Skeeter Davis' "End of the World"; and Anika is at her most Nico-esque on a stark revamp of Greta Ann's "Sadness Hides the Sun. Conversely, Yoko Ono's Yang Yang is transformed into a fantastic anti-pop single, with klaxon-like synths providing the hook and a bassline so strutting it could have been stolen from a blaxploitation soundtrack. Though the album is mostly covers, Anika imprints her identity on every track. The dubby version of Bob Dylan's Masters of War and its reprise reflect her background as a political journalist as much as her original song No Ones There does. Anika is a bold, often fearless debut, and even if its occasionally an acquired taste, it doesnt hedge its bets.
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The success of "Fuck You" could have easily relegated former Goodie Mob member and Gnarls Barkley frontman Cee-Lo Green to novelty status. But a boatload of hot beats and Green's singular voice help elevate The Lady Killer past the potty-mouthed glee of its first single. Combining throwback Motown grooves with splashes of futuristic keyboard jams, The Lady Killer is stuffed to the gills with sinister grooves and big hooks. "Fuck You" is a clear highlight, but second single "Bright Lights Bigger City" also cooks (with a big assist from the bass line from "Billie Jean"), as does "Who's Gonna Love You" — perhaps the first future-funk torch song.
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Sinéad O'Connor's landmark second LP is one of the most lyrically complex heartache albums of all time, a winding narrative of subplots, complications and conflicts worthy of a Pynchon novel. Emotionally bruised and impossibly resilient, O'Connor maps complex aches rarely spoken about in song — how people can still anger us after their death ("You Cause As Much Sorrow"); how fame can complicate pregnancy ("The Emperor's New Clothes"); or how a mother can carry the pain of a miscarriage forever ("Three Babies").
more »Even with her formidable skills, the two songs she didn't write stand just as tall. Obviously there's the harrowing, Prince-penned "Nothing Compares 2 U" which — often beloved and/or decried as a tearjerker — is as lyrically rich as any O'Connor original, capturing the bittersweet, contradictory emotions of freedom and loss that follow a break-up. "I Am Stretched On Your Grave," taken from an anonymous 17th-century poem, is easily history's saddest use of the "Funky Drummer" break, O'Connor's ethereal voice floating like Enya copping a punker safety pin, drifting between blasts of industrial noise and manic Celtic fiddling.
The rest of the album's musical palette is no less knotty and remarkable, a swirling, ahead-of-its-time, string-heavy woosh that links Madonna's Like A Prayer to an airy trip-hop future — with enough room for one venomous folk song ("Black Boys On Mopeds") that sounds like Dylan gone KRS-One. Teetering on the edge of moshpit and meditation, new wave and new age, it's a perfect place for O'Connor to traverse those rarely documented places where love mixes with bile.
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This is it -- every studio recording made by Au Pairs, one of the smartest, sharpest bands of the post-punk era. Stepping Out of Line contains the two albums, 1981's Playing with a Different Sex and the following year's Sense and Sensuality, as well as all the non-album material, three tracks from a BBC session, a live version of "Piece of My Heart," one previously unreleased track, and a handful of demos for a third album that never materialized. Most of the non-album material surfaced on RPM's reissues of the two albums, but those discs vanished shortly after release, and an attempt on the part of Cherry Red to condense the best of it all onto one disc in 1999 came up short. No one could possibly give this band's output too much attention.
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Originally released on Epic in 1965 as a live in-church session, Legacy's 1991 reissue of Freedom Highway includes two of the original LP tracks supplemented by some truly spirited late-'60s Epic recordings. Despite the glaring omissions, Freedom Highway never feels like a hastily thrown-together compilation. Instead, it follows an arc that deftly mirrors the religious, political, and social fervor of the '60s as filtered through the warm vibrato of Pops Staples' amplifier and the golden throats of his brood. Gospel standards like "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and "Wade in the Water" benefit from the full band arrangements, giving them a swift kick of rock & roll that would eventually morph into the soul-funk sound of their popular '70s period. Pops, inspired by his meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., contributes the wickedly infectious title cut -- one of the two live tracks from the original -- and the incendiary "Why Am I Treated So Bad," a bluesy lament inspired by the hardships of the "Little Rock 9." As always, the vocals and harmonies are nothing short of astounding, most notably on the Mavis Staples-led "Move Along Train" -- never has gospel sounded so sexy. Each song bristles with emotion and resonates deeper with every repeated listen, resulting in an experience that transcends scripture while remaining true to its alternately redemptive and fiery foundations. Freedom Highway captures a family approaching the cusp of catharsis, and its charms lie in the world-weary delivery of its message. Their devotion has been tested and their hands have been bloodied, but their faith has grown into an endless garden because of it, and by the time they reach the spookiest version of "This Train" ever put to tape, listeners will no doubt feel as empowered as the stoic passengers themselves.
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Skank has two meanings and in 1979 the Slits parodied both, wearing little more than mud on their infamous album cover while merging punk and reggae in a gawky fashion that has remained a cool touchstone ever since. Vocalist Ari Up, guitarist Viv Albertine and bassist Tessa Pollitt (along with male drummer Budgie), working with Linton Kwesi Johnson producer Dennis Bovell, used the multi-racked spacial separations of dub to hector, taunt, scream and insinuate their gleeful feminist critiques from every possible angle.
more »The Slits weren't, however, melodists (Lilliput/Kleenex, who spoke a similarly atonal dialect, at least had the excuse of being Swiss). Arguably, though, that's the Slits 'appeal: you don't fully absorb their tracks as much as glean them in fierce fragments. "It came completely out of nowhere, this weird, self-taught organic thing," Albertine would later recall. "As we became more aware, we didn't want to follow male rhythms and structures." Still, it's nice to have the addition here of the Motown standard "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," so you can appreciate exactly how the Slits were rewriting pop: turning monologue into dialogue, rendering the familiar strange, imagining not crossover but crossings over and out.
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On her fifth studio album in little over 10 years, Neko Case offers even more proof that her restless musical spirit can't be contained under the alt. country umbrella. The country motifs are still evident, but they're keeping company with all manner of styles. The soulful "Red Tide" shares much of its DNA with Amy Winehouse's "Back To Black," the combative feminist stance of "People Got A Lotta Nerve" powers along on an anglophile jangle that recalls The Lemonheads or Matthew Sweet, while "Magpie To The Morning" boasts the same laconic jazz-folk of Cowboy Junkies.
more »Case's covers choices are equally intriguing, remodelling the 1974 Sparks hit "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" as a hymnal warning about the damage we're visiting upon the planet (a subject addressed on several other tracks); Harry Nilsson's "Don't Forget Me" echoes with pianos like a portentous lullaby. The crystal-clear diction of her voice manages to soothe and scare across the same few bars, marking her as one of the most powerful and alluring singers of recent times.
