Kill Rock Music

Back in the good ol’ days (I recently heard that apparently, a time existed before iPods, but those rumours may be apocryphal), artists would often cover songs by other artists without any fear of being seen as unoriginal or untalented. Some of the best artists of the 1950s and 1960s never wrote their own music and are still (rightly) seen as legends today. Elvis, Hendrix and even pop’s Gods the Beatles often fell back on others’ music, often making the song their own. Dylan was apparently so impressed by Jimi’s cover of All Along the Watchtower that he began playing Hendrix’s version live. There really is no reason an artist should shy away from a cover.

A great cover can make you look at and appreciate a song in a whole new light. Even at its absolute worst, a cover can introduce you to a band you might have never discovered otherwise. Ashamed as I am to admit it, my first exposure to New Order was through Orgy’s cover of Blue Monday (hey, I was only sixteen). A great cover should simultaneously bring something new and exciting to a song while also reminding you why the original was so great in the first place. It can be a fine line to walk in my opinion, as a lot of covers are either unnecessarily (and pointlessly) reverential or annoyingly and winkingly ironic. Everybody knows the classic and iconic covers (Hendrix’s aforementioned Watchtower, Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, Patti Smith’s Gloria, and I could go on), but I decided to focus on some lesser-known covers this week.

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Okay okay, this is hardly an unknown cover song, but it’s just too good to leave off the list. I liked Nine Inch Nails’ version of this song alright, and it appealed to my angry sixteen-year-old ways. Now, I haven’t listened to the original in ages, while Cash’s cover often comes up on my playlist. He takes a well-written but ultimately self-pitying and melodramatic song and turns it into a powerful meditation on a life full of mistakes and regrets. He sounds so frail in the beginning, but I get pins and needles when his voice finds some previously unused reserve of power to get him through the final accepting refrain of ‘If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself, I would find a way.’

Soulsavers - No Expectations

The Rolling Stones’ original of this song is okay, but their countrified melancholia works better on their better-known numbers like Wild Horses. Soulsavers take the far-from-happy original and makes it into an absolutely beautiful slice of battered defeat. Mark Lanegan was conceived to sing songs like this.

Crooked Fingers - Solitary Man

This is off an all-covers EP that Crooked Fingers did in 2002 called Reservoir Songs. All of the songs on the EP are worth a listen, but this is by far my favourite cover. I already posted Johnny Cash’s excellent cover of this song, which is a bit snarling and defiant. Eric Bachman takes the song in a different direction on this cover, remaking it into a pained, banjo-plucked reminiscence on how one ended up being alone.

Beth Orton - Ooh Child

The Five Stairsteps version of this song is a soul classic in its own right, and its refrain of ‘Ooh Child, things are gonna get easier. Ooh Child, things’ll get brighter’ is an optimistic cry that better times will come to pass, a message that I don’t think Beth Orton wholly believes. Her version of this song recasts it as another heartbreaker, with the lyrics sounding like just a weary deceit uttered by a frayed mother to an overtired child. This is exactly what I look for in a cover, as I love both versions of this song for completely different reasons (and emotions).

The Dandy Warhols - The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Gordon Lightfoot wrote this classic story-song about a shipwreck on Lake Superior, and the Dandys craft it into a nine-minute drone rock epic. This cover might not be the most substantial, innovative or necessary cover on this list, but it’s still a damn cool re-imagining. See you next week!