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Underground > Radio & Music >

Cover songs

Blue Eyes Not Innocent

17:56 / 13.12.08

I'm a big fan of cover songs. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Northern Kings, big bombastic coverbands just make me intensely happy. I've found that I prefer most of Bowie's material when it's played by other artists(such as Bauhaus playing Ziggy Stardust), too. What do you think of covers, love, loath?

And now, I've got a band, finally. Mostly. Still need to nail down the drummer. But the guitarists and I've talked about wanting to mix a few covers in with the original material. Any suggestions? We're a fairly standard goth/punk/metal band, I suppose, but I'd rather not fall back on the stand-bys like Metallica and Pantera, much as I love them.

18:59 / 13.12.08

(Covers should be the next mix, by the way)
I think that the best songs to cover are just the best-constructed songs. But to make it more interesting, maybe you should choose something outside of the genre you are playing in. Most of the best covers I can think of are ones done in a style that's very different from the original, but where you can still easily recognize the tune, and sometimes it can accentuate a part of the song that was latent in the original.
I also think it may be better to cover simpler songs, though I've heard some good covers of complicated ones.
Radiohead covers are getting a bit overdone, but it's easy to think of a few good ones as examples. I think both of these have been linked here before, a cover of "Just" and a medley done country and western style.

Blue Eyes Not Innocent

19:39 / 13.12.08

I've got so many covers that I could contribute to a cover mix, Tsuga!

I'm not a big Radiohead fan, and I don't know that any of the other guys are either, but we'll see. I also like songs that're different from the original but still recognizable, like Jonathan Coulton's cover of Baby Got Back or The Gimmes's cover of Science Fiction/Double Feature.

Blue Eyes Not Innocent

19:42 / 13.12.08

Forgot to include links, sorry.

Science Fiction Double Feature

Baby Got Back

13:07 / 14.12.08

I wasn't suggesting that you cover Radiohead, so much as using them as an easy example. Some songs have been covered endlessly, notably about half of the Beatles catalog. The song "Black Hole Sun" has been covered alot:
"Black Hole Sun" has been covered by Paul Anka, Mimi Goese, Incubus, Jandek, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, Cibo Matto, jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, The Moog Cookbook, Alanis Morissette, Copeland, as well as by former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell on his Euphoria Morning tour and by Cornell's current band, Audioslave, on their Out of Exile tour and Live 8 performance.
You could pick an earworm and use it. Think of any Hall and Oates song, and you could run with it.

12:46 / 15.12.08

Ted Leo did a good cover of "Since U Been Gone."

Acoustic guitar, fast and furious.

So in other words, cover something catchy that's outside your genre comfort zone.

I mean, Johnny Cash's "Hurt" is already legendary.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:44 / 15.12.08

The Johnny Cash "Hurt" is an interesting one, because it proposes the principle of sameness, which I think is one of the two ways you can do covers. The Cash cover succeeds because Cash is better at inhabiting the space occupied by the voice Trent Reznor sought to create. It's simply easier to see Cash as a man with an empire of dust, basically. The problem with the principle of sameness is that you have a real danger of creating an unnecessary cover version (such as Tom Jones' cover of "Kung Fu Fighting" from the Supercop OST) or of having a horribly incorrect idea of what sameness actually means (so, the doomy, bleak, intricate "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" became, in the hands of Fields of the Nephilim the doomy, shit, shit, shit, shit "In Every Dream Home a Heartache"). The Bauhaus cover of Ziggy Stardust is a pretty good principle of sameness cover.

The principle of difference is exemplified by Jonathon Coulton's cover of "Baby Got Back". Whatever you think about the sog on its merits, the gag is that this is a song made famous by a big, loud, black hip-hop artist of just the kind we don't like around here, being covered by a fey, white, indie singer-songwriter with a guitar of precisely the kind we do like around here. It's the same core gag as the Gilbert and Sullivan "Baby Got Back", the jazz-pop "Just" or indeed Jay-Z making as if to perform "Wonderwall". Within that, I think covers can be more or less respectful, on both sides, and of course more or less competent - Travis' cover of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" brings out a particular element of the original - its qualities as a lament - and does so pretty well given that this is Travis we're talking about.

Cover version question: why is the Soft Cell cover of "Tainted Love" necessary and the Marilyn Manson cover utterly unnecessary?

16:38 / 15.12.08

Manson was giving a nod to an influence. I wouldn't say "unnecessary"...
Way back in the mid-ninetys Frente! did an amazing "Bizarre Love Triangle"...
I also have a big weakness for all the Nouvelle Vague stuff.

16:39 / 15.12.08

Oh, and the Alanis Morrisette cover of "My Humps" might be the best cover of all time.

19:05 / 15.12.08

I shudder to think what that's like, FT. I can't help but wonder if it isn't addressing issues that Morrissey would be better off talking to someone about alone, in a room with muted lighting.

On the Manson thing though; his cover of 'Tainted Love' didn't really work because it seemed like a return to past glories (depending on how you want to look at that, of course). Manson's always been a bit of an Eighties whore - would he have got to wherever he is now without his band's versions of 'Sweet Dreams' and 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?' Perhaps when he did 'Tainted Love' he was over-playing his hand, but the cards were against him, by that stage; his career was shot.

And he had enough money. So why not churn out something for the record company who'd funded his quite odd (although diverting, I found) concept albums to do with JFK, Jesus and so on? Adam, the primal Serpent, attacking one's genitalia with a chainsaw, pressing issues of the day.

In a way, when you think about it, it might have seemed unreasonable if Manson hadn't covered 'Tainted Love'.

20:04 / 15.12.08

I absolutely love the video for MM's "Tainted Love," though. I have no idea who decided to make a hip-hop video of a goth-industrial cover of an 80's synth-pop cover of the Supremes, but the hearse with the hydraulics was freakin' awesome.

I think one way of flirting with that same space/different space divide (with or against the grain readings?) is by thinking of one of your favorite songs from high school (or n number of years ago, when n is greater than 9) and doing that to the best of your abilities.

I think that's probably how Robyn Hitchcock wound up covering "Kung Fu Fighting" so surprisingly well - it seemed to me that he just really liked the song, even though it was disco and he was kind of post-punk alternative psychedelia.

21:17 / 15.12.08

Tainted Love has been covered a ton of times. I was always partial to the Coil version when I was younger, at least it's a good example of taking something in another direction. I thought I had posted last night an example of what grant was talking about when he says
I think one way of flirting with that same space/different space divide (with or against the grain readings?) is by thinking of one of your favorite songs from high school (or n number of years ago, when n is greater than 9) and doing that to the best of your abilities.
"Mad World", was a song I used to really like when I was young, the original from Tears For Fears version. Then seeing Donny Darko I heard the Gary Jules cover, which I have to say, is a better version. I think. At least, it's a very good version of a cover song, one that is unique while retaining the heart of the song.

01:48 / 16.12.08

The Sisters of Mercy's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Teachers" is not to be missed. Actually, come to think of it, most of their covers are excellent, if occasionally bizarre... there's something about Andrew Eldrich singing Dolly Parton's "Jolene" in total seriousness that's absurd to the point of incomprehensibility.

Oh, and Tori Amos's cover of Raining Blood is also excellent.

In general, I think that covers must wholly reinterpret the initial song to be worth much. There have been a number of occasions in the past few years where I've been out in the shop listening to the abysmal local rock radio station (since my shop radio eats tapes) and I've been dismayed to hear some perfectly good Pink Floyd or New Order song growled out by some pathetic nu-metal band, adding nothing to the original but fake angst. Bleah. I think that even Cash's NIN cover falls into this category; his take is better than the original, perhaps, but that's not saying much.

Don't cover obvious songs. It's BORING.

02:05 / 16.12.08

Oh, you also asked for cover suggestions. How about Songs: Ohia's Coxcomb Red?

Whisky Priestess

11:28 / 16.12.08

All I beg is that if you choose to cover Leonard Cohen, do Everybody Knows or Tower of Song, NOT Halleleujah (as currently being butchered by Alexandra off X-Factor). It's not that she can't sing, more that she's completely ignoring the content of the lyrics, as indeed is to be expected, I suppose.

On the plus side, the video is the most slashtastic lesbian romance montage I've seen on mainstream telly in a long time.

20:34 / 20.12.08

Hello Barbelith- long time no post.
Going back to tainted love- it was originally performed by Gloria Jones (later Marc Bolan's wife and driver in the infamous mini accident, fact fans). I reckon its the best version, maybe because the soft cell version is so bloody well known it feels like a great cover version I found this weird montage video on youtube but for those that haven't heard its definitely worth a listen.

The weirdest recent cover that i've got into was 'TV on the radios' doowop / barbershop quartet version of Mr Grieves, originally by the Pixies.
I found some fool dancing to it on Youtube- but also worth a listen if you can ignore the happy fool!.

I love Nick Cave & the Bad Seed's "Kicking Against the Pricks" album-its the record that got me into the Bad Seeds. Its full of amazing cover versions, mixing classic blues tunes with 60's garage rock classic versions of "All Tomorrows Parties", "Muddy Waters", "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" and a fucking brilliant version of "Somethings Gotten Hold Of My Heart".

Also worth a mention are Dexy's midnight runners- not least for this throwaway cover of Geno Washingtons northern soul classic "Tearing Down The Walls of Heartache"- absolute genius and criminal that it was only ever a b-side.

However lithers while talking of Dexy's, here's something that Gumbitch sent me this week and definitely worth a post in this thread- specially cos its christmas!

23:08 / 20.12.08

Tsuga;

I quite like Coil ('Windowpane' is in the top twenty somewhere) but surely by any reasonable, objective standard that video is ridiculous?

Being on enough drugs to fell an elephant is no excuse.

23:18 / 21.12.08

Well, I never said it was a good video.