I had a hard time throwing a post together last night, and I’ll be out carousing tonight, so the odds of me getting a good covers post together are slim. But I’m not going to skip a week, by damn. If I can, I’ll throw a few songs up at the end of this post later.
I’m occasionally asked just why I like cover songs. Which seems like an odd question. It’s like asking someone why they like sunflowers or what exactly makes them like jazz music. There aren’t simple quantifiables to any of those questions, and you’re either challenged with making someone ‘get it’ or saying something slightly vapid like “because they’re pretty.”
My relationship with cover songs is, like any notable relationship, rocky. The local music scene in Northeast PA in my formative years led to me being pretty heavily overexposed to uninspired and mediocre covers of guilty pleasure songs. And there are certainly plenty of (just like the song says) bad cover versions out there. I don’t remember what the first cover I heard that converted me was, but it happened sometime late in high school. Probably thanks to file sharing’s burgeoning presence in our lives around that time and not live music (my concertgoing resume is so much slighter than it should be).
So, what’s my attraction to covers? I like variation. I like reading scripts, watching the alternate angles that you sometimes find in DVD bonus features. I understand that, as someone who creates, the act of creation is not as by-the-numbers as it appears, that it is a process of innumerable choices and decisions that, despite the level of polish it might have, is never really finished. When it comes to music, live versions, covers, demos, et cetera are the same as the first drafts and the other camera placements – they play up different qualities that a particular song has.
A good example of this is probably Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You In The End,” which is probably the most covered of Johnston’s songs. Matthew Good covers the song at the end of Hospital Music, as does Jay Bennett in a series of recordings he did with his Wilco bandmate Jeff Tweedy back in the 90s. The song’s a pep talk to someone who’s been hurt by love, a reassurance that the right one will come along if you keep looking. Bennett’s version communicates that optimism, but Good’s is more somber, sadder and halting, as if he’s trying to convince himself (which he very well may be, with Hospital Music being an album about his divorce). The words are the same; the music isn’t much different, but the difference between the two is what intrigues me about them.
How about you, anonymous reader? Why do you love cover songs? Comment below to let me know.
Bonus – Songs discussed above:
True Love Will Find You In The End – Jay Bennett and Jeff Tweedy (Daniel Johnston Cover)
True Love Will Find You In The End – Matthew Good (Daniel Johnston Cover)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I enjoy the perspective. I am notorious for importuning my friends with the same question, only to then berate them with a demand for their reasoning. It’s not that I’m doing the weird girl “what are you thinking about?” crap, but more like I’m doing the weird psychological analysis of why those people gave those answers and how it relates/demonstrates their perspective.
That’s what cover songs seem like to me. It’s (to borrow a cliche) like walking a mile in another band’s shoes. Phish’s version of Gin and Juice? Oddly amazing. The Cardigan’s Iron Man? Weirdly brilliant. Reel Big Fish’s Hungry Like The Wolf? Sleazily enjoyable. Richard Cheese? Well… Cheezy. You get the idea.
P.S.- I found this for you: http://www.coversproject.com/
It’s not Phish. It’s The Gourds (check out the June 6th FCS post).
Coversproject is great. It’s like Secondhand Songs without being so disreputable looking.
I think you nailed it; I love covers that reveal more of the song than the original artist does. A great song can stand up to that level of interpretation.