Dangling Conversations

Posted 25 Oct, 2005 at 16:09 by matt in /Music | Permanent link

As a starting point, let me throw out the following guideline, which you should feel free to deconstruct or rip into or whatever: a proper cover should have two things going for it:

1. It should bear the stamp of the performing artist, as much as possible;
2. It should retain the virtues of the "original" version, as much as possible.

Now one can record a cover which fails to meet one or both of these criteria, and still have an adequate song; but true cover greatness, I feel, requires the above strictures.

Among the songs which fail #1 are the note-for-note covers: trying to recreate the original version as much as possible, whether out of devotion for the subject or more mercenary concerns. For instance, you may remember a Toronto singer named Allanah Myles, who had a big hit (in Canada at least) called "Black Velvet". This was covered by an American country singer -- the two were on the charts at the same time -- and the cover version was almost identical to the original. What's the point?

Sixpence None the Richer covers fail in this regard: their versions of "There She Goes" and "Don't Dream It's Over" are fairly pleasant light listening, but remain to close to their sources... and quite frankly, the Las and Crowded House, respectively, did it better. The Letters to Cleo version of the Cars' "Dangerous Type" (from the soundtrack to "The Craft") is note-for-note with the original down to the vaguely annoying little synth figure after each chorus, and is saved from mediocrity only by the Cleo singer's voice being somewhat more pleasant that Rick Ocasek's.

The second criterion's a little harder to gauge, since one has to separate the song from the singer; for some songs this is impossible, and so effective covers for these songs -- that still allow for the performers' own styles -- are almost unimaginable. (Many of the songs on the newest Tom Waits album, for instance -- without Waits' delivery and the Marc Ribot guitar work, they would be much paler, sadder things.) A few punk/ska-style covers I've heard go too far in this respect; they manage to wrest the song into their genre of choice, but the result ends up sounding either generic or just odd.

(Of course, both of these are subjective; I find the Quicksand version of "How Soon is Now?", originally by the Smiths, to be too far from the tone of the original and without the same brooding melancholy; the Love Spit Love version is too close to the original, with the changes mostly being Pro Tools-style overprocessing. Others will no doubt disagree.)

So those are the rules of the game, at least for now. I've mostly talked about covers that I don't like; next installment I'll get to some that I do.

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