0.6.1 - It sounds like someone else's song from a long time ago
Eventually serendipity is going to stop delivering to me these ideas for topics and I might have to think about what I am going to write in advance like some kind of animal, but as long as the universe is going to keep suggesting topics, I'm going to keep following it's direction, if only because I love the path of least resistance.
On Monday this week, I listened to my 200th album since I started doing this, and I deliberately stopped at 199 just before the Superbowl because I wanted to give some thought to what I would listen to as the digits ticked over to 200. I even drove nearly two hours to Manchester listening to podcasts instead of music because I wasn't ready to commit to a 200th album choice. By Monday morning, I had decided. I've been putting off listening to Taylor Swift albums because I don't want to exhaust them all so early into the year; as a special occasion, I would allow myself to listen to her most recent album, because she name checks a lot of other bands on that album, so I could listen to all of those as well and that would be a neat little article. That was the plan.
The last album in that little block was James Taylor's Sweet Baby James, and when I moved on to something else, I did what I do in those situations and reached for my recommended by friends list. I'd listened to one of Liam's recommendations last week, and I knew nothing about Merry Clayton. I put her album on, and it went straight into a motown cover of a James Taylor song I had literally just listened to 20 minutes earlier. So, from Taylor Swift namechecking James Taylor, to him being covered by Merry Clayton, somehow I ended up spending much of this week listening to bands sing songs better known to have originated with other artists. Taylor, like Kendrick, gets relegated to the Sunday wrap up.
I'm sure I'm about the two-hundred-thousandth (that's a weird word to type, it felt odd coming off the keyboard) person to talk about the phenomenon and psychology of cover versions, but it's my show and if you are still here six weeks into this, you're gonna get my opinion on them and we're going to grow closer together as friends. Conceptually, I love a cover version. I'm particularly fond of them as additions to live tour setlists; it's something a bit unexpected and familiar at the same time, it lets the band or artist pay tribute to a song that inspired them in the past, or another current artist they really like. This video is perhaps my platonic ideal of a live tour cover. I can't talk about my love of CMAT until August because we are going to see her then and (assuming the world and live music are a going concern by then) I'm saving those albums to listen to in the runup. She's incredible, people should go seek out and consume her stuff - please.
So, if you're on tour, and you want to put a cover on your setlist, a bit of a crowd pleaser, something to blow off some steam, I am all about it. Everyone gets carte blanche, no judgment here.
Now, if you want to record that song, and put it on an album, under your bands name? Then you have some personal Rich criteria you need to meet for me to not view your efforts with extreme scepticism.
- The song must be recognisably itself - if you put out a song with the same melody but different lyrics, that's an interpolation and not a cover, sorry, nice try. If you call your song 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant' but its a 15 minute math rock epic where the lead singer just screams "BOTTLE OF RED, BOTTLE OF WHITE' over and over in the middle third, that's not a cover, that's a different song. If you take an existing song, change 10% of the lyrics and loop a 45 second section of the song with a euro dance beat over it, that's not a cover, and you are David Guetta, History's Greatest Monster.
- It can't just sound like the original - what are you wasting everyone's time for? Note this is fine for live shows as discussed above, but if its going on an album, it's got to sound like your version of 'Barracuda', not you just recreating the Heart version because you had four and a half minutes to fill on your album and no better ideas.
- It's got to be recognisably your band doing it - If you're a prog metal band, putting out a jazz funk cover of 'Cowboys From Hell' might meet the first two criteria, but just doing it for the sake of weird irony isn't a good enough reason to expect people to listen to it.
So, you're gonna put a cover on your album, and you're confident you have met those criteria, then sure, have a crack. The secret fourth criteria is that it has to be at least as good as the original, but art is subjective etc etc. There are songs which meet all the criteria, and have catapulted both the cover band and the original artist to new audiences. OK, good talk, lets break for lunch shall we?
I see. For some reason, we're putting out a full album of cover versions. It's a bold strategy Cotton, let's see how it plays out for them.
Merry Clayton - Gimmie Shelter
Reasons for doing this: Motown has a long history of having its music appropriated by white performers and going on to become hits for them, this seems entirely fair.
Does it meet the criteria? It definitely does. It's a variety of different original styles all given a soulful Motown arrangement and she sings the hell out of them all. I found her version of Country Road jarring but that's purely my bone-deep familiarity with the original. This is a fine album, I preferred it significantly to the Cassandra Wilson album I listened to a couple of weeks ago, and I wonder how I'd feel about any original songs. It looks like she has a couple of albums of original songs I might check out, though her 2021 album might be a bit too churchy for my tastes.
Placebo - Covers
Reasons for doing this: Inscrutable, unknowable. Possibly something record deal related, possibly because prestige TV show music directors were running out of moody covers to put over dramatic scenes in their programming.
Does it meet the criteria?: It definitely all sounds like Placebo, it's all recognisably the songs, so it's hard to criticise it on technical grounds. Their version of Running Up That Hill has become both iconic and cliche due to overuse, but I like their version of obscure Robert Palmer song Johnny and Mary and Depeche Mode's I Feel You, and frankly the more people who record good versions of songs originally by The Smiths (and their version of Bigmouth Strikes Again definitely qualifies), the less we have to listen to the Morrissey versions.
Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls
Reasons for doing this: I think it would be easy to confuse this with the horrible John Lewis piano girl cover trend I ranted about last week, but Tori has a long history of interesting and unexpected cover versions, and it's never been a gimmick or some kind of winking irony; Her arrangements are often purposeful and written and delivered to not only recreate the song, but change the intention, the vibe, the sense that the song was trying to convey without making significant changes to the lyrics or structure. Her recent cover of Swimming Pools (drank) does more than just transpose Kendricks lyrics onto a white girl with a piano, so I'm going to claim her motives are pure and based in deep interest in music and theme.
Does it meet the criteria?: Man, this one I struggle with. I am a long time Tori Amos fan, Catherine and I bonded over our mutual love of her on our second date (Catherine met her in the mid 90s at the stage door of Sheffield City Hall and has a photo that makes me seethe with jealousy). There's no doubt that every cover on this album is a big swing, taking a bunch of songs sung by men about women and reframing them with a female perspective is a great idea. But big swings can mean big misses; Turning Happiness Is A Warm Gun into a 10 minute dirge intercut with audio news footage about gun control and school shootings is a bit like adding 40 minutes of footage of Katheryn Bigelow holding a sign saying "War is bad and irrational" into Dr Strangelove - the message was kinda already in there, and pretty blatantly without your contribution. I can't get alongside her version of Heart of Gold because I'm so down bad for the original. But her version of I Don't Like Mondays does a better job of retaining and emphasising the 'Guns are bad' message than the Beatles cover did and gives it a haunting quality the original lacked; and talking of haunting, her version of Eminem's '97 Bonnie & Clyde takes a song about domestic abuse and murder played for laughs and strips the laugh track away, leaving you to face the dark reality within. Worth listing to that if nothing else.
Various Artists - Urban Renewal: The Songs Of Phil Collins
First, a sidenote. This was not originally scheduled in this block of albums but regular Malifaux opponent and impish troublemaker Matt brought this to my attention in a shared message group in the middle of me listening to these cover albums. I thought about excluding it on Various Artists grounds, but it's a studio album and a specific project, and my morbid curiosity got the better of me.
Reasons for doing this: Your guess is as good as mine. I've tried to construct any scenario in my head where the pitch for this album makes it beyond the 'laughed out of the room' section of the pitch meeting. My number one theory is that there's secretly a huge appreciation in the late 90's/early 2000s rap community for the music of Phil Collins and this was a passion project for all of them.
Does it meet the criteria?: For those not familiar, as I was not only twenty-four hours ago, this is an album of Phil Collins covers by the hottest stars in Rap and R&B of the early 2000s. Want to know what it sounds like when one of the Wu Tang Clan does a rap cover of Sussudio? Can L'il Kim deliver the power and menace of the vocals of In The Air Tonite? Ever wondered how Montell Jordan would perform Against All Odds? Well, this is how he does it.
But does it work? Well, obviously no. This fails a lot of the "the song is recognisably the original" test; ODB spitting verses over the synth hook of Sussudio is entertaining, but it's not a cover; the R&B contingent take a more faithful stab at some of them (and the Montell Jordan and Dane Bowers covers are pretty faithful deliveries of the original) but the whole thing is a massive curiosity/fever dream that I am glad I have experienced but not for any of the right reasons. Here's the whole album on Youtube if you want to go on the same journey I did.
Rage Against The Machine - Renegades
Reasons For Doing This: Almost certainly RATM decided to take a bunch of songs that spoke about fighting oppression and active resistance and throw themselves bodily at them. I'm fine with it.
Does It Meet The Criteria?: Well, every song on here definitely sounds like a Rage Against The Machine song; they are a band with one mode, one lane and they launch themselves down down it at great velocity, which suits the energy of their choices. I'm not wild about the Springsteen cover on here, but almost everything else almost perfectly demonstrates why a band would put out a covers album; it's got a theme, it's executed on, the songs are recognisable but the sound is all Rage. If you like other Rage Against The Machine songs, this will not upset you in any way. No notes.
Weezer - Weezer (Teal)
Reasons For Doing This: Rivers Cuomo and Weezer suffer debilitating cramps and shaking fits if they don't do something nauseatingly winky and ironic every year or so. Also publicity.
Does It Meet The Criteria?: Why do I do this to myself? I could just retain my relatively happy memories of Weezer, the band that released two albums between 1994-1996 and then disappeared back to their home planet. Obviously the sheer novelty of Weezer releasing a cover of Africa by Toto set the internet ablaze just prior to the Pandemic, and I've known of this album since then, but studiously avoided it for fear of it upsetting me in some way.
It's such an empty void of an album that I couldn't even find it in me to be upset about it. It's a set list of a local scrappy wedding band playing at your friends late night wedding reception. Everything is just the original with a big sign hung over it that says "Isn't it weird, this is Weezer singing this song?!" Nowhere is this more apparent that their overwhelmingly self indulgent cover of No Scrubs. Are the kids still saying cringe on the internet any more? If they are, that.
David Bowie - Pinups
Reasons For Doing This: If you think I feel at all qualified to interrogate David Bowie's decisions you are in the wrong place. He can do what he wants.
Does It Meet The Criteria?: I've been aware of this album for a long time also, but I've never felt the inclination to seek it out; When I want to listen to Bowie, I have decades of classic original songs to choose from - listening to him cover other people's music feels like a kind of lost opportunity somehow. So this was my first time hearing any of these tracks apart from his versions of See Emily Play, because for a Floyd fan and a Bowie fan that was required listening when I learned of it's existence. The rest of the album does unsurprisingly sound like David Bowie doing his typically idiosyncratic take on other people's music. It definitely met the criteria, but I couldn't help coming away feeling like it was a lost opportunity just to be listening to Low, or Alladin Sane, or Ziggy Stardust or...well, you get the point.
Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around
Reasons For Doing This: To both validate the efforts of musicians throughout the years while showing that he can take any song and add gravitas and make it uniquely his own. Leaving an incredibly legacy of music. I dunno, he's the best.
Does It Meet The Criteria? Are you out of your mind? The American Songbook albums, of which this is the fourth of five, exist as the standard for what people should do with cover versions. This is kind of a cheat for the concept, as a lot of the songs on these albums are 'covers' of his own songs, but there's huge swathes of modern music from all genres represented, and this album has performances from Fiona Apple, Don Henley, Nick Cave, and John Frusciante. When Trent Reznor, who has been closing Nine Inch Nails shows with Hurt since 1994, including the one I was at in 2000, says that the song belongs to Johnny Cash now, you understand the power of these recordings. The existence of these albums retroactively justifies every Weezer cover album past, present or future.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Kicking Against the Pricks
Reasons For Doing This: There's an argument that in our current climate of remakes and reboots, people should try rebooting the shows that didn't work, rather than the already successful and beloved one, to see if they could be improved a second go around. This thinking is apparently the rationale behind this Nick Cave album, as Nick Cave is on record saying "(for) other songs, we just didn't think the song was ever done particular well in the first place". I applaud the spirit of this endeavour.
Does It Meet The Criteria?: Let me answer that question with another - what is the musical style of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds? His vocal delivery which makes me feel like I'm always slightly high or drunk while listening to him is there, so if it's that, then sure. I'm not sure I could pin it or them down much more concretely than that, and I'm not sure I agree with Nick that all of these covers are improvements (I'm not a fan of the version of Hey Joe on here), but many of them exist as a fascinating exercise in experiencing Nick Cave not signing his own songs. Of all of these nine albums, this is the one that even as I type this staring down the barrel of 11pm on a school night, I don't know where I come down on. It made me think, and that has to be a good thing, even if it might not be the kind of record I'd listen to regularly.
So, cover albums - OK? Obviously since I selected these, I'm not exposing myself sight unseen to Victoria Beckham sings the songs of Elvis Costello or anything similarly misguided, and I am certain there's more hits than misses out there, but if it's done with feeling, with intent, with emotion - like all art - even singing someone else's song can tell people something new about yourself.
