The concept of the cover song has existed for about as long as music
has. In some cases, good covers take on lives of their own; they
transform a song’s meaning, help it or its writer find a new audience,
and sometimes turn a throw away a major hit. Here are the top ten that
trumped the originals.
10.
10.
Found A Reason
The Velvet Underground / Cat Power
Written toward the end of the Velvet Underground’s existence and for their final album, Loaded,
which was intended to be “loaded with hits” but effectively failed to
yield a hit single, “I Found A Reason” finally turned into a hit of
sorts when Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, included it on her
2000 album The Covers Record. Marshall’s version strips the
song down to a simpler but far weightier piano and voice arrangement,
and its immediate appeal can be seen in the fact that soundtracked key
scenes in several movies during the mid-2000s, most notably V for Vendetta.
9.
to Share My Life With
Television Personalities / Jens Leckman
When Swedish singer-songwriter
Jens Lekman covered “Someone To Share My Life With” on one of his early
EPs, the song sounded so in line with his own worldview that it was
almost impossible to recognize it as a cover. Cleverly, Lekman had also
sampled Television Personalities’ singer Dan Treacy’s vocals from the
original version in his own hit single “Maple Leaves,” further bridging
the gap between original and cover.
8.
Tom Waits / The Eagles
Waits opened his debut album
Closing Time in 1973 with “Ol’55″, a song covered by a number of
artsits, most notably the Eagles. While Waits did not build a following
until a decade later, the Eagle’s version made it on the charts. Waits
described the cover as “antiseptic”, the masses did not agree.
7.
Kong
Daniel Johnston / Tom Waits
Daniel Johnston’s history within
the music world is anything but conventional. An artist who made his
name through a run of self-recorded cassettes making apparent a love of
the Beatles and an utterly unique worldview.”King Kong” saw Tom Waits
rework the song – itself a retelling of the film King Kong –
from a more inaccessible near a cappella track to a booming percussion
and voice composition, helping it find a new audience upon its release
on the excellent compilation The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered,
on which a number of other musicians, including TV on the Radio, Bright
Eyes, M. Ward and the Flaming Lips build full-bodied reinterpretations
of Johnston’s work.
6.
Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam
The Vaselines / Nirvana
Kurt Cobain famously described the
Vaselines, a Glasgow-based indie pop band active in the 1980s and again
recently, as his “most favorite songwriters in the whole world,” and
often covered their songs in concert and on Nirvana records. The band
performed “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For a Sunbeam” on its now-famous
episode of MTV Unplugged, giving the song and the Vaselines much greater exposure than they ever had before.
5.
the Time I Get to Phoenix
Jimmy Webb / Glen Campbell
At a time when more and more
performers were expected to write and sing their own songs, Jimmy Webb
found success by working within the old model of the career songwriter,
writing for other performers who gave his songs their most popular
arrangements. “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” is no exception to this, as
it became a huge hit when Glen Campbell performed it; by 1990, and it
would go on to become one of the most performed songs in history. One
version worth checking out is Isaac Hayes’ cerebral reworking of the
song on his album Hot Buttered Soul, which goes on for upwards
of twenty minutes and sees Hayes explain the central narrative of the
song for almost ten before he sings a note of the song itself.
4.
So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding
Nick Lowe / Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Initially written as a tossed-off,
semi-ironic B-side to a single for his pub-rock band at the time,
Brinsley Schwarz, Nick Lowe’s song “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love,
and Understanding” proved a hit for Elvis Costello and the Attractions,
who performed an utterly sincere-sounding version of it in the late
1970s and turned it into a hit single. Stranger yet, Curtis Stigers’
cover of the song was featured on the soundtrack to The Bodyguard,
which went on to become the best selling movie soundtrack of all time
and has essentially provided Lowe with an endless stream of revenue
through royalties since its release.
3.
and Shout
The Top Notes / The Isley Brothers / The Beatles
Few people think of Phil Medley
and Bert Russell, or the Top Notes, when they think of “Twist and
Shout,”. The song charted first for the Isley Brothers and then several
times for the Beatles, who sold well over a million copies of the single
and only failed to hit number one on the American charts because “Can’t
Buy Me Love” was already occupying that space. Additionally, it had a
longer chart run than any other Beatles single in America, as the song
began selling well again following its inclusion in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
2.
Leonard Cohen / Jeff Buckley / Rufus Wainwright
Despite Leonard Cohen’s reputation
as one of the greatest lyricists and songwriters of the 20th century,
he’s nowhere near as well known as the original author of “Hallelujah,”
one of the most covered songs of the last twenty years, as he is for his
somewhat more obscure back catalogue. Singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley’s
cover of the song – itself a cover of John Cale’s reworking of Cohen’s
version – and similar versions by Rufus Wainwright, k.d. lang, and
countless other musicians have made the song into a new standard of
sorts. On this topic and after versions of the song appeared in Shrek, Watchmen,
and in a number of other films and television shows, Cohen famously
said that “it’s a good song, but [that] too many people sing it.”
1.
Louie
Richard Berry / The Kingsmen
While songwriter Richard Berry had
achieved a minor hit with “Louie Louie,” when a Portland, Oregon based
band called the Kingsmen covered the song and rendered what was
essentially intelligible utterly incomprehensible, they had a smash. The
Kingsmen’s version of the song garbles the lyrics, botches the
structure, fractures its rhythms, and even features a moment in which
singer Jack Ely very audibly comes into the chorus too soon, all of
which now defines what “Louie Louie” is essentially supposed to sound
like. Within 15 years, playing “Louie Louie” at a crowd would become the
easiest way to express contempt for one’s audience, with Iggy Pop
famously doing it to a crowd several times in a row at one gig and
groups such as Motörhead and Black Flag making it staples of their live
sets. To top everything off, the Kingsmen’s cover was also the subject
of an FBI investigation pertaining to the supposed obscenity of its
utterly incomprehensible lyrics. However, after several years and a
number of interviews, the bureau concluded that the song was in fact
completely impossible to make any sense of, and the investigation came
to a swift end.
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