Covering Up

I’ve long been a fan of a well-done cover song. The magic lies in their ability to re-introduce you to a song you already know, but didn’t realise perfectly matched how you felt that day last spring when [insert personal reference: mine goes something like ‘you remembered you live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world’/or ‘yes, that is exactly how your rejection felt after the third bottle of wine!’]

As I type I’m listening to Cat Power’s cover of Nick Cave’s ‘Breathless’, and here’s where things get a little trickier. I adore Nick’s version (that flute intro…), and I wish Cat hadn’t touched it, even though I suspect it’s not a bad cover. I just wish I didn’t know there was a cover version out there. Which is exactly the problem with covering a song in the first place; someone out there will tear you to shreds for it, not to mention how the original artist will feel about it if the end result is rubbish, if they’re still alive. A good friend of mine has had some very, very harsh words to say about Scarlett Johanssen’s fingers going anywhere near Tom Waits and I know exactly where she’s coming from.

This has got me thinking about all the cover songs I do like though, and here are five of my favourites:

• Placebo’s cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Running up that hill’
• Ben Fold’s cover of The Postal Service’s ‘Such Great Heights’
• Tori Amos’ cover of The Cure’s ‘Lovesong’
• Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’
• Johnny Cash’s cover of Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus’.

(honourable mentions go to Tori’s cover of Nirvana’s ‘Smells like teen spirit’ and Placebo’s take on The Smith’s ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, but listing people twice is poor list etiquette)

And now I'm thinking about covering songs as an accepted Remix process (admittedly without the copyright issues in the cases above...)