Strangely, it seems cover albums are kind of popular this year. I wrote about the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Tortoise cover of "Thunder Road" in the Will Oldham topic, but their entire album is very good although some songs fail to surpass the originals.
My two favorite covers from this year are by The Czars, from his cover album "Sorry I Made You Cry." They are "Where The Boys Are" (originally performed by Connie Francis) and "Angel Eyes."
The two covers have a lot in common: originally they're both older, pretty ordinary pop hit songs about boy-girl love, which The Czars took and made his own (The Czars are one guy, John Grant). He did this, generally, by making them much sadder and more melancholic, really mining as much emotion from the originals as possible. Both covers are significantly longer than the originals, and more acoustic, with The Czars relying heavily on his own (sad-sounding) voice. The thing that makes me like them the most, though, might be the way in which he changes the context. "Where The Boys Are," sung by a man (and specifically as it's sung by The Czars), becomes a song about homosexual love, and the lyrics in "Angel Eyes" are even changed - from "And I saw him together with a young girl" to "And I saw him together with a young boy" and so on. I have no idea about John Grant's sexuality, but I'm thinking this might be done to further personalise the songs and give him a greater emotional connection to them (or his versions of them, rather). A third song on the album, "Black Is The Colour," is changed in a similar way, by the context.
So I like these songs a lot, but at the same time it seems a little bit formulaic to me (in the sense that I'm easily impressed by a certain kind of cover). Reading my previous post, I notice that I fall for this a lot.
A sadder version of "Mad World" - better!
A sadder version of "Hurt" - better!
Anything Mark Kozelek (one of the saddest musicians ever, it seems) has done - better!
A sadder version of "Thunder Road" - better!
A sadder version of... well, you get it.
I really do like all those covers better than the originals, but is adding sadness a particularily easy (indicating, perhaps, lazy or formulaic) way to do a good cover (meaning providing a new perspective on the original song)? The same question goes for changing the lyrics or context a little in the way that The Czars do, so that the lyrics gain new meaning.
I get suspicious of my own taste, here. |
