Covers

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I was listening to Rod Stewart's album Every Picture Tells A Story the other day and it struck me that there were four cover versions on it, out of nine songs. I don't know the original versions of the Bob Dylan and Tim Hardin songs, but That's All Right (Elvis) and (I Know) I'm Losing You (The Temptations) were pretty great. Even in 1971, Rod Stewart was pretty well known, and still he did all those covers. Why don't stars do that kind of thing any more? And I don't mean more Wyclef Jean. If Aretha Franklin can sing Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel songs, why not have Destiny's Child do Radiohead?

― JoB, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

imagine the treatment they'd give 'paranoid android' "girl, you must be paranoid" "but i ain't no android!"

― tyler, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Maybe Rod had one more record to deliver to make good on his shitty contract, but only four new songs:-)

I haven't heard the songs, but given the fact that it's Rod Stewart I assume that they're pretty straightforward - albeit well-performed - renditions of the songs. Nowadays, for any act, half an album's worth of new songs (because that's basically what Stewart did) would just be perceived as lazy. If you go full-on, you either go Robbie or do it the way Chan Marshall did on her Covers Record. It goes without saying that the latter is recommended. Either way it's more expensive than writing your own songs.

Then again there's PLENTY of popacts doing covers for their debut- singles. Almost seems as if it is becoming their territory (maybe that's anoher reason why stars are laying off it except for maybe the occasional monster-duet, the charity-single...).

Destiny's Child...hmmm I can't seem to hear them get any further than 'Baby Love' or 'The Happening'... As for Radiohead, BTW, they used to include quite a campy version of Carly Simon's 'Nobody Does it Better' in their liveset back in the day.

― Alacran, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

FWIW, Chris Hillman of The Byrds/Flying Burrito Brothers does a great rendition of "Tomorrow is a Long Time" (off of Morning Sky, I believe), the Dylan song. And Bobby Darin does a great version of "Reason to Believe", the Hardin song.

― Joe, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Tonight ILM I'm going to be Tanya Headon...Covers records. How to get away with doing this and still appear genius? A) Pick 10 songs with nothing in common with each other, or anything else you've ever done, to show off your eclectic miasma of influences. Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart" next to Cannibal Corpse's "Meat Hook Sodomy" is a good start. B) Sing every song in the exact same fashion, preferably completely 'deadpan'. (i.e;, sound like somebody who just woke up singing phonetically out of a foreign-language phrasebook.) That way, you'll get praised for being 'brave', 'irreverent', and 'recontextualising the songs'/ 'finding connections that nobody knew were there', etc. C) Either play every song in the exact same fashion (see above - when imagination fails, 'deadpan' is the easiest route), or play stuff that has nothing to do with the original. You've picked all these supposedly 'influential' (on yourself) songs off of Napster a day prior to recording just going by the funny titles, it's not like you know how they're 'supposed' to go anyway, so just play/program anything.
Voila! Now you are an eclecticist whose 'understanding of the music runs deep and broad', or a 'playful iconoclast ransacking the canon to paint mustaches on hallowed figures and unearth hidden treasures', etc. I used to really like albums like 'These Foolish Things', 'Pin-Ups' and 'Kicking Against the Pricks', and I still find them listenable but I certainly don't think them 'revelatory' or anything else but a cred shortcut anymore. (BTW the Brazen Hussies have done "I'm Alright(Theme from 'Caddyshack')" live and desk tapes are priced eminently unreasonably

― dave q, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

i havent decided if i hate james taylor more than roddie. anyhow prince did a cover of joni m's "drink a case of u." RAWK!

― helenfordsdale, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Whatever happened to the old type of covers? Cover versions, meaning to copy an imminent hit single thereby hijacking its chart position vs. remake, to record a new interpretation of an old hit. True covers abounded in the 50s and 60s, such as Pat Boone covering "Tutti Frutti" or Shadows of Knight's "Gloria". All the Rod Stewart versions in question were remakes, as were Cat Power's, ie, Stewart wasn't co-opting anything of Hardin's.

Today, however, when hit singles are culled from year-old, albums it seems that opportunities for old-style covers are everywhere. Are there any recent examples of this, or has it just been replaced by piracy?

― Curt, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I don't know how it worked in the old days (it's the song not the singer?) but nowadays don't you have to get permission to do a cover, so maybe the rights aren't given until the chart potential of the original is exhausted?

I remember Noel Gallagher refusing to give the rights to the Smurfs for 'Wondersmurf' quite recently.

― N., Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Uh . . . didn't Destiny's Child just have a hit with a cover of the Bee Gees "Emotions" ?

― Jay, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

You need permission for samples, but once a song has been published, isn't it up for grabs?

― Curt, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Jay, that's an old song. There are billions of cover versions in the charts, but Curt's point is that in the 50s/60s you'd get covers rushed out of new songs trying to cash in on the success of the original, leading to competing versions of the same song in the chart.

― N., Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I mean cover versions of (quite) recent, well-known songs not necessarily meant to cash in on the original hit. The Rod covers I mentioned are not straightforward at all. Like Otis covering the Stones or the other examples I mentioned.

― JoB, Sunday, 3 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

(I tht you said the BH did a covah of "Forming", Tanya? Er, Dave?)

I think there was a 70s law-change that made the 50s/60s versh of "covers" (eg pre- emptively, as when the Crew-Cuts did "Sh'Boom" or Cilla did "Anyone who Had A Heart") less profitable, but there was also a zeitgeist change, in that post-Beatles it became "cool" to look to the source, so that the original became more likely to chart profitably

at that stage in his early 70s solo career was Rod not thinking to do a "joe cocker" (who was known as a "covers", eg interpretative, artist, a role was i suspect knocked out of fashion by the parallel emergence of singer- songwriters in a big way)

what was difft abt ferry esp was that he did noel coward as well as leslie gore as well as smokey robinson as well as bob dylan, eg he was — beatles-style — "re-addressing the rock canon" (not that that's intrinsically a GOOD thing to do , but it *was* a surprising and an unusual thing: cocker and rod sorta merely reigned in the canon, lad-blues narrowed it, kinda?)

(ps i LIKE rod back in those days, tho cocker drives me barmy)

― mark s, Sunday, 3 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Early Rod and Cocker filled the gap between the advent of Dylan-type songwriters who "couldn't sing" and the reign of singer-songwriters (who couldn't do either heheh). I think this grew out of the folk scene, where Judy Collins and Tom Rush were known for introducing the public to new songwriters like Joni Mitchell or Fred Neill. God, this seems like such ancient history, I can't say what the present day equivalent might be....DJ mixes? Protege guest rappers?

― Curt, Sunday, 3 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

twelve years pass...

for your consideration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NglnO3KFOzw

― Treeship, Sunday, 14 December 2014 23:25 (nine years ago) link

seven years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvtg3DOLMj4

― youn, Friday, 1 July 2022 11:16 (one year ago) link

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