10 Covers

Some folks hate cover songs. I adore them. A good cover song can make me look at the original in a new light. It can make me notice the lyrics in ways I didn’t before. It is part of the on-going conversation of art, an homage to influence and a way to move a song forward with a contemporary version. Of course there are some that can eclipse (ha!) the original. That’s opinion of course.

I think Ron Sexsmith’s rendition of Heart with No Companion is more interesting and melodic than Leonard Cohen’s original but the lyrics of Cohen’s song are just so damn brilliant, I am glad it exists and I’m glad that Sexsmith slowed it down.

I love Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper’s song from the 80s, but I really love its remake by Inuk artist Elisapie’s adaptation.

Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff delivers such a clear and gritty bad ass version of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. I imagine young people learning this song for the first time in her voice. Gorgeous.

Maggie Gylenhaal’s version of Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are appears in a film called Happy Endings. I don’t remember the movie anymore, except that Gylenhaal is doing a this song for Karaoke.

On their album Chapter 1: The Sandworm Cometh: Early Recordings, My Morning Jacket does a haunting rendition of Elton John’s Rocket Man.

I discovered this absolute gem of cover songs for David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, put out by Toronto’s Paper Bag Records. It was even downloadable for free at one point, and I have it. Yay! Listen to this cover of Starman by The Rural Alberta Advantage, it kinda blows my mind, it’s so different from the Bowie version.

It’s hard to compare in any way the incomparable Vic Chesnutt, who was sheer brilliance as a musician, as a lyricist, as a guitarist, as a vocalist. The Cowboy Junkies did a whole cover album of his music as part of their Nomad Series, which is another rabbit hole I invite you to go down…

Listen to Margo Timmins sing Chesnutt’s powerful and heart-breaking song, Flirted with You All My Life and tell me it doesn’t give you shivers:

Sometimes a good cover will introduce me to a band I have never heard of. I used to get Mojo Magazine for its CDs. One issue featured Love Will Tear You Apart, “(2007 UK Mojo 'Subscribers' Special Edition' 15-track compilation CD album, originally only available with the February 2007 issue of Mojo magazine. Features fifteen hand-picked tracks of hurt, pain and despair, includes Sparklehorse, Elliott Smith, Nina Simone, Elbow, Jarvis Cocker and more. Housed in a custom card picture sleeve)

My favourite song from the album is by Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, who does an absolutely beautiful version of the Joy Division song. This is Susanna Wallumrød, a Norwegian vocalist. How fantastic she is!

Sometimes I have no idea why or how I got an album. As in the case for Scala & Kolacny Brothers, an all-girls choir that does cover songs. I adore their version of the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony. Rabbit hole: Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson. Read it, or a bit of it and you’ll thank me for taking the journey down the rabbit hole.

A friend gave me a CD of Masked and Anonymous, the soundtrack for a failed Bob Dylan film. I adore this cover of Like A Rolling Stone in Italian, Come Una Pietra Scalciata by Articolo 31 and the man himself.

Let’s finish with one of my favourite covers, Japanese band, Shonen Knife’s rendition of the Carpenters song, Top of the World.

There are many, many more covers I could talk about here, but I have to go play backgammon with Charles. What are your favourite covers?

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