Covers - best, worst and weirdest

There's nothing better than a good cover, but what is it that makes a great cover? is it turning the song into something completely different, or just "doing it better"? Personally I'm all for the whole new angle approach for a dam good cover - why bother if its going to sound the dam same. Though it is amazing how many shitty shitwanky pop covers do well in the charts.. (Pop muppets Blue's "Signed Sealed Delivered" always makes me wince.) Wrong wrong wrong.

So, I've been hunting through the ipod and the internet trying to think of some of the best.. and oddest covers out there..

Jonny Cash - We'll meet again
(origina - Vera Lynn)

Vera Lynn's original 1939 song is an optimistic one, for those brave fighting lads off to war, trying to think of a happy outcome, (infact, it was included in a list of songs to be played on the BBC wartime broadcasting service for moral boosting after a nuclear attack in the cold war - just to cheer us all up). Optimistic, patriotic, positive stuff.

To me, Cash's cover is the reverse of this - it's raw, a sparse recording - Cash's great voice seems to loom up -mighty even, but each time undercut with the fragility of his age. I could of easily picked out Cash's cover of Hurt, which is truly brilliant.. the same, sparse, raw and fragile feel but I think this cover stands out in the difference between it's original of hope, and Cash's take on it, the last track on an album seen to be his response to his growing illness and old age.

Hear it on American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002)

Jamie T - A New England
(original - Billy Bragg)

I guess you could say its quite easy to beat the original - sung in a thick brummy accent by Billy Bragg, not the best voice to grace record.. (still, I'm a Bragg fan, God that phrase doesn't sound right, his version is brummy gold).

Anyway, Jamie T keeps the same lo fi feel, doing a reverse Dylan and swapping Bragg's original electric guiatar for an acoustic. You can't get more unpolished than Billy Bragg but this manages it, Jamie T's singing and playing sounds rushed, hurried almost careless - sung with emotion.

Maybe what I love about it you may well hate, but ahh well.. it's definatly worth checking out, especially if you've liked the more production-heavy Jamie T tracks/album.

Listen here, via Myspaz

The Specials - Maggies Farm
(original - Bob Dylan)

At first I put down the Rage Against The Machine cover, but nah.. I thought I'd attempt to describe The Specials cover, though I think I'll struggle.
A ska / reggae cover of folky poety king Dylan might be a little obscure, but this is something else. It's more chanted than sung, with high pitch Terry Hall and the rest of the band joining in, with crazy bongo rhythm with a strange off kilter piano tinkling away here and there.. but no matter how strange it is, it's impossible to resist that rhythm (man).

Listen here


Otis Redding - Satisfaction
(original - The Rolling Stones)

dundun..duddledun..dundundun.. It's already a brilliant song, but with the man of soul Otis Redding with THE back up band (Booker T & The MGS) it's gets even better.
Here's the riff going back to it's soul and funk roots - that heavy (innit) baseline perked up with trumpet and sax. ( Keith Richards had originally wanted The 'Stones version to have a horn section.. so maybe this cover is how it should sound like :)
Otis Redding's voice is brilliant, it's not mellow crooning soul singing, or the leery sheer campness of Mick Jagger but he sings with that trademark energetic, almost croaky desperation.

I canna, get no, no, aha, no, saaaaaaytis fack shon. Brilliant.

..

and it was pretty hard not to include all of Rage Against Machine's Renegades album, or Ronson's Versions.. too many good covers on both!

.. that just a few that sprang to mind, what did you reckon to the best / worst / most interesting covers out there?

What do you think?