What makes for a great cover tune? Like anything else related to the arts, it might ultimately just be a matter of personal taste. Talk to members of any local cover band in your town, and they will tell you that audiences pressure them to sound as much as possible like the original artist and tune being covered. In other words, audiences want karaoke versions of the songs. A lead singer of a local band once told me that she decided one night to perform AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" as "Highway to Heaven" and got met with a HELLISH response from the crowd. I'm guessing that's typical.
For me, a great cover tune has to be BOLD. By that I mean a few different things:
*In choosing to cover a song already identified with another artist, the cover artist risks professional humiliation. Just DARING to cover certain songs is an act of boldness.
*Taking the original version of the song and performing it in a unique way is one of the boldest moves an artist can make. When done well, the cover version takes on a life of its own and almost sends the original into obscurity.
The opposite of boldness when it comes to cover tunes are situations in which the cover artist merely mimics the original or simply records the cover for commercial reasons. That's called "selling out" or exploitation and gives the whole business of covering other artists' tunes a bad name.
I know everyone reading this can name dozens if not hundreds of cover tunes that meet my boldness criteria. Here I'm only going to name ten (in no particular order):
#10: Elvis Presley's cover of Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right Mama". I'm fully cognizant of how racism in the music industry and the USA at-large resulted in phenomenal singer/songwriters like Arthur Crudup never getting proper recognition or royalties for their compositions. A good summary of the relationship between blues, rock-and-roll, and racism--written by sociologist David Szatmary--can be found here.
The reality of racism, however, does not diminish the impact of Presley's version of "That's All Right Mama." Of all the songs mentioned in this blog post, Presley's "That's All Right Mama" is actually the most karaoke-ish in the sense that Elvis is clearly channeling Crudup's attitude and style. But try to appreciate how RADICAL that music must have sounded to uptight white youth of the 1950s. Top hits in 1954 included sentimental ballads like Sinatra's "Young at Heart" and Eddie Fisher's "Oh! My Pa-Pa." When put in that pop-music context, Presley's "That's All Right Mama" was a kind of caffeine boost in a youth culture not quite awake yet.
#9: Peggy Lee's cover of Little Willie John's "Fever". "Fever" was written by R & B giants Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell, and recorded originally by Little Willie John. The song's been covered extensively, including by Elvis, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, and Beyonce. Most of these artists perform the tune as an expression of lust; a raunchy tune designed to get the crowd rowdy during live performances.
Peggy Lee I think was the only artist who grasped that "Fever" is really about DESIRE, an emotional state that when experienced in a fully human way sees the object of said desire as an equal person. Pure lust, in contrast, is about seeing the other as strictly someone to fuck. To put it in terms of the song's lyrics, desire more than lust is a "lovely way to burn." Peggy's performance revived her career in 1958 and became her signature song.
#8: Nirvana's cover of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World". In the early 1990s a myth developed around grunge-rock bands that they somehow had a contempt for earlier progressive rock. Pearl Jam's embrace of Neil Young and Nirvana's spectacular cover of one of David Bowie's more esoteric tunes effectively destroyed that myth. Nirvana introduced the tune to a new audience in a way that honored the original while signaling the obvious pain that would lead to singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain's suicide not too long after the recording.
#7 The Mamas and the Papas cover of Ozzie Nelson's "Dream a Little Dream of Me". This pretty ballad of love and longing is deceptively easy to sing, making it ripe for covers. I would advise readers not to listen to too many versions of it, because the butcheries of it can almost ruin the song. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's 1950 cover of the song is first-rate outstanding, but Cass Eliot's rendition in 1968 is for me the definitive version against which all others should be judged. I'm especially partial to this version of the tune as a tribute to Mama Cass, who was the victim of some vicious, Trump-style misogyny and trolling decades before the Internet. (The lie that she "choked on a ham sandwich" for many years took attention away from her powerful vocal legacy and also the fact that she was a beautiful person.).
#6: Eric Burdon and the Animals cover of the traditional "Rising Sun Blues". The Animals'"House of the Rising Sun" was released in June of 1964, and fifty-five years later the opening guitar licks, eerie keyboards, and Eric Burdon's soulful vocals keep you hooked. The Rolling Stones are usually given credit as representing the grittier side of the British invasion in contrast to the cheerful pop of the Beatles, but I've always thought that credit should be shared with Burdon and the Animals. "House of the Rising Sun" proves the point.
#5: Dick Dale and the Del Tones cover of the traditional "Misirlou". Dick Dale died in March of this year, just shy of his 82nd birthday. Some would argue he was the original guitar hero, known for soaring surf riffs and pioneering the use of the loudest amplification possible. He was a big influence on Jimi Hendrix and many others.
"Miserlou" was and is a remarkable example of how to take a Middle Eastern folk tune and rock it into another world. When Quentin Tarantino put "Miserlou" in his 1994 "Pulp Fiction" he exposed a new generation to the tune, and demonstrated how an audio track can grab a film audience's attention as much as a shocking visual.
#4: Linda Ronstadt's cover of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas "Heat Wave". In some ways Ronstadt's 1975 cover of a 1963 Motown classic is the boldest of the bunch. Imagine the audacity of even trying to cover such an acclaimed tune, sung with searing intensity by Martha Reeves, and backed up instrumentally by the Funk Brothers--arguably the greatest rhythm section in the history of the world. But sometimes audacity is necessary for great art and, while Ronstadt does not surpass the original, her "yeah yeah! . . . yeah yeah!" shouts come off as her simply saying "I just love this song and I aim to sing it as best I can!" Andrew Gold's guitar playing does not try to upstage the Funk Brothers' horns in the original, but it gives the song a mainstream rock twist that perfectly complements Linda's vocal.
Heat Wave became Ronstadt's most requested song at concerts, to the point where she pretty much got sick of singing it. Sadly, she developed Parkinson's disease in the 2000s and since 2011 literally cannot sing at all. Even though she cannot sing, she still gives voice to human rights causes, including her passionate advocacy on behalf of migrants.
#3: Ike and Tina Turner's cover of Creedence Clearwater's "Proud Mary". I don't think there's a guitar playing storyteller alive who does not owe a debt to Creedence's John Fogerty, and one could also argue that there's some Tina Turner in pretty much every major female pop/rock artist of the last twenty years. So when Tina Turner tackled "Proud Mary," it was like one giant paying homage to another.
Due to legal hassles, Fogerty did not perform his own songs for many years. He claims that a conversation with Bob Dylan changed that. Dylan told him that if he did not start performing the songs again, the world would forever think that "Proud Mary" was Tina Turner's song. That's probably true, as Tina's version is so dynamic and unforgettable that it's almost hard to believe someone else wrote it. Fogerty and Turner did tour together in the year 2000 and performed "Proud Mary" as a duet.
#2: Richie Havens' cover of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun". Beatles' songs are notoriously hard to cover, in large part because the band's recording studio innovations and distinct vocal styles make it difficult for even the most talented artist to tackle a Fab Four tune without bringing it down a notch. Richie Havens' cover of "Here Comes the Sun" is a dramatic exception to that rule.
Written by George Harrison, "Here Comes the Sun" is an extraordinary song both lyrically and melodically, one of two Harrison classics on the Beatles' "Abbey Road" album (the other was "Something"). The only way to cover successfully an extraordinary tune is to counter it with something at least equally extraordinary. Havens actually pulled that off, stripping the song down to guitars, bass, and conga drums from the Beatles' orchestral arrangement. Havens sings the song with such raw emotion and plays his guitar so free-wheelingly that the original song almost comes off as over produced. I love both versions of the song, but Havens' does strike me as a remarkable artistic achievement which really set a high bar for anyone attempting to cover a Beatles' tune.
#1: Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." I think I'll let Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails front man and writer of "Hurt," do the talking on this one:
"[Johnny Cash's producer] Rick Rubin has been a friend for a long time, and he called me asking how I felt about Johnny covering "Hurt." I was flattered, but frankly, the idea sounded a bit gimmicky to me. I really didn't put much thought into it, as I was working on something at the time and was distracted. A few weeks later, a CD shows up with the track. Again, I'm in the middle of something and put it on and give it a cursory listen. It sounded... weird to me. That song in particular was straight from my soul, and it felt very strange hearing the highly identifiable voice of Johnny Cash singing it. It was a good version, and I certainly wasn't cringing or anything, but it felt like I was watching my girlfriend fuck somebody else. Or something like that. Anyway, a few weeks later, a videotape shows up with Mark Romanek's video on it. It's morning; I'm in the studio in New Orleans working on lack De La Rocha's record with him; I pop the video in, and... wow. Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore. Then it all made sense to me. It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. Some-fucking-how that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning-different, but every bit as pure. Things felt even stranger when he passed away. The song's pur-pose shifted again. It's incredibly flattering as a writer to have your song chosen by someone who's a great writer and a great artist."
There you have it, Part I of Media Rants' identification and interpretation of ten bold cover tune. Part 2 will appear when and if I get inspired to come up with another list!
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