Cover Versions

I've never seen the point of cover versions that just replicate the original. Then there are those cover versions that simply murder the original, check out Grace Jones and Swans' cover versions of Joy Division songs "She's Lost Control" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" respectively.  Both make me want to rip my own ears off.

But occasionally the cover version is neither homage nor pastiche, but actually manages to improve on the original. Maybe it just has better quality of the recording. But more likely it's either more deliciously taut than the original, or perhaps more camp and reveals what was present in the original composition all along but had just got hidden.

So here's 15 of my favourite cover versions. Enjoy.


1) The Specials - Message to Rudy
The Specials did several cover versions of Ska songs, launching off with a cover of "Gangsters". But this just throbs with emotion that lifts it from the original by Dandy Livingstone whose vocals are a bit tentative.



2) The Stranglers - Walk On By
While Dionne Warwick's original is pretty damn fine, the sheer dirtiness of the bass sound and Hugh Cornwall's guttural vocals just make this a totally different song. Someone should do a mash up of the two it would be ace.



3) Flying Lizards - Money
Deborah Evans does her best Nico impression and this knocks the Beatles' original into a cocked hat. It's so basic, so stripped down, it's almost perfect pop, or anti-pop.



4) Devo - Can't Get No Satisfaction
Robot-aping geeks pleasingly lance the self-contentment of Jagger's priapic original.



5) Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Yes they were Camden Town music hipsters playing fast and loose with musical post-modern irony, but since I've always found Neil Young's voice a bit reedy, having a deliciously fragile female vocalist sing it made much more sense. Know it all pop that turns out to be just perfect pop in its own right.



6) The Klaxons - The Bouncer
Another of those rarities where I like both versions equally, but the tribal nature of the two clans, the old school dance mob who love the original versus the Nu-Rave devotees of this version go at it hammer and tong in the comments section.



7) Gun Club - My Man's Gone Now
This is the inverse of the Warwick/Stranglers scenario. For here is Nina Simone's full-bloodied original dripping with regret, hurt and a touch of bile, turned into a camp late night whisky bar song (and sung off key to boot) by one of the hardest living & rocking bands in the world. I can't get enough of it.



8) Butthole Surfers - Hurdy Gurdy Man
And then there are some that are just weird and wonderful. Donovan's original was a bit odd in its own distortion pedalled right and the Buttholes just turned that up to eleven in their hilarious version.



10) Soft Cell - Tainted Love
Marc Almond takes Gloria Jones' Motowny feel and manages to make it both seedy and full of pathos at the same time. One of the songs that perhaps shows the biggest differential between the two versions.



11) Minutemen - Have You Ever Seen The Rain
Another example of a beefier modern sound improving a slightly hollow 60's version as Creedance Clearwater Revival's genius is suggested by having so many modern bands pay tribute to them with cover versions.



12) The Clash - Armagideon Time
Even live the quality and musical noodles going on here put Willie Williams' version into the shade I'm afraid. And this was only ever a Clash B-Side!



13) Rachid Taha - Rock el Casbah
Boot on the other foot now and The Clash have one of their songs claimed in another style. This sounds somewhat more authentic somehow.



14) Tricky - Black Steel
Tricky takes a plodding Public Enemy standard and turns it into an genuinely unnerving version.



15) World Domination Enterprises - Funkytown
I can think of few songs that have so utterly had the band's stamp smeared and coated all over it like this. West London blight stamped all over a disco number by Lipps Inc. that was more likely to have been played in the clubs of the West End.



Bonus Track:
William Shatner - Mr Tambourine Man
I say bonus track.... There is always the spectre of non-singing celebs doing terrible cover versions, like Paul Gascgoine singing Fog On The Tyne. Shatner here does to pop music what he did to method acting.

Since My Man's Gone - Chanteuses

Pop music. Girl meets boy. Falls in love. It doesn't work out. He hawks his heart elsewhere, (maybe to the devil if he's Robert Johnson). Girl left broken-hearted. Feels the need to tell someone. In song. If these chanteuses don't make you rip your own heart out in solidarity, then you have no heart!

1) Nina Simone - My Man's Gone Now

I first came across the song in a wonderfully campy OTT version sung by Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club. I love that version, but then I heard Nina's. It was no longer a campy song anymore, let's put it that way...

2. B52s - Give Me Back My Man

The B52s, vampy beehive beach party band, when could they ever be associated with pain and heartbreak? And yet Cindy Wilson's voice all sugary sweet Stepford Wife flutters and cracks with an undertow of despair until she belts out the title line in the chorus, with a voice of broken glass.

3. Julie London - Cry Me a River

If she is to take her man back, he has to demonstrate to her that he's cried the same floods of tears over her, as she did for him. Her rich voice subtly wavers between the confident and the cracked. Breathy with both sensuality and faltering belief. This song is slow enough for Julie to take her time carefully modulating her delivery of each word. As much as I love punk and all things after, it's freneticism scarce allows for such vocal detail.

4. Poison Girls - Done It All Before

Talking of punk, this is one of those rare slow ones. Is there a more world weary female vocalist than Vi Subversa? "She's done it all before, but not with you". Ouchy!

5. Dionne Warwick - Walk On By

Another female classic I first encountered as a punk cover version courtesy of The Stranglers. But after a confident intro, Dionne's voice hovers on the edge of tremulous without ever surrendering to it. She's keeping it together, but receding ever so slightly in the mix, like she's choking everything back down, tears and words. When she speeds up the delivery at the end, it's like she's girding herself and challenging him at the same time. Delicious.

6. Janis Joplin - Piece Of My Heart

From the bottom of the bottle. Drained to the last drop and then refilled with real tears.

7. Billie Holiday - All Of Me

Talking of being 'in pieces' Billie laments like no other vocalist. the phrasing and everything are just heart-rending.

8. PJ Harvey - Rid Of Me

Such a mighty voice dripping ardour from such a tiny frame.

I challenge you play all 8 tracks uninterrupted and not remain without a tear in your eye and a little ache in your solar plexus.