There must be some kind of way out of here

[venta]

Well, today NME has published a chart of the "best cover versions of all time".

It's here: http://www.nme.com/news/muse/53090

Virtually none of them meet my criteria for a good cover. In particular, I don't believe that most people will have had any idea that the songs were covers when they first heard them. If someone had to tell you the song you know is a cover, it doesn't count.


[Poll #1622076]

Other reasons why the NME is wrong: in their corresponding chart of the worst cover versions ever, Madonna's American Pie only makes #8.

Edit The Beatles' song should of course be Twist and Shout. Search and replace error :)

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

AFAIK 'Hey Joe' is an arrangement of a traditional song, and therefore can't be counted as a cover. Of course, Hendrix may be basing it on someone else's arrangement, but as far as I'm concerned it's like saying that Simon & Garfunkel's version of Scarborough Fair is a cover.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm led to believe Scarborough Fair practically is a cover. Someone (this anecdote was better when I was told it, because the teller knew who) more or less wrote the song from a fragment of a traditional song - but owing to the snottiness in 1960s folk clubs about writing your own material, said it was traditional. Which meant they had no leg to stand on when Simon and Garfunkel recorded it!

I was thinking that I'd no idea what the original of Hey Joe might have been, so it makes sense that it's a traditional song.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

The earliest known commercial recording of the song is the late 1965 single by the Los Angeles garage band, The Leaves which predates Hendrix, so IMO Hendrix's version is 'not the original'. Whether it's also 'a cover' is another issue, but I don't think you can successfully argue for his version being the original.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I just went to look for Muse's cover of Feeling Good (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmwRQqJsegw), and of course I know it... I just had no idea it was a cover.

Also: yikes, scary scary faces.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Hmm. My knowledge of All Along the Watchtower went U2, Dylan, Hendrix...

There's also the awful version used by Battlestar Galactica, but I don't want to know who that was by or where it came from...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes - I didn't allow in my poll for hearing a different cover first. All those Alexandra Burke fans will be so disappointed :)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

...But not Elvis's version of Blue Suede Shoes?

Hmm. Does your definition mean that something stops being a good cover when it becomes better known than the original? As opposed to the original being obscure to start with, I mean?

[venta.livejournal.com]

It doesn't stop being a good cover - it's a person by person thing. So maybe you can appreciate something as a cover version when I can't, because I don't know the original version.

You can get a certain amount of retrospective coveriness by subsequently going and listening to the original, but I don't think it's ever quite the same.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Fine point. And on that one, I suspect I heard the original first, or at least at roughly the same time as the Elvis version.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I think they are right that Feeling Good is a great cover. But yay Muse. They were fab live when I saw them both times. But dunno about the rest. Sometimes I'm stuck in the poll because I'm now not sure if I know the original cover or what.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I needed a button for "Recognise the song but don't know which version".

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Where's 'I know the original and have never heard the cover'? ;-) I had to go and look for the White Stripes' version in order to answer the last one. ('Don't know it at all' to me suggests not knowing the song, which is not something I could answer for that one, unlike the Nirvana/whoever one.)

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

The White Stripes one is a tricky one for me to answer, as I haven't heard either version, but I have the piano music and a CD with generic recordings of Bacharach :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Damn, I thought I had that option in there. I rewrote the answers several times to try and covers as many bases as possible in as few options as possible, and obviously that one fell out by mistake.

the Nirvana/whoever one

Lead Belly, since you ask.

Oh, except according to Wikipedia, it's another traditional song and Lead Belly isn't even the earliest recording of it anyway.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Me ditto on this. Is the White Stripes version any good then?

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

On looking up 'Twist and shout', it seems that what I thought was the original was the cover by The Isley Brothers! So I think that still proves your point...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Yikes, me too. Oops.
Although I suppose, for all we¹ know, the Beatles may have been consciously covering the Isley Brothers version, rather than the original. In the same way as Alexandra Burke is covering Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah, not Cohen's.

---

1 Where "we" excludes that guy who wrote the big book of exhaustive detail on every song the Beatles ever did. He probably does know.

[triskellian]

Many of my answers are blurred by knowing I've heard at least two versions of the song, but not necessarily knowing who they're by, or what order I heard them in. Or, in the case of Muse, I'd heard (presumably) the original before I heard the Muse version, but Muse have since entirely eclipsed it in my head.

Oh, and I've never heard the Johnny Cash 'Hurt', but was amused by someone at Reading a few years ago tallying the covers NIN played and including it because he had no idea it was their song first ;-)

[zotz]

Conversely, I used to meet people who assumed Reznor had written Dead Souls.

[triskellian]

And although I'd heard of it, I'd never heard 'All along the watchtower' until I went and found the Hendrix version after it was used in Battlestar Galactica. And it gets confused in my head with a Tori Amos song which includes its title as a lyric.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Ah, if you haven't heard the Johnny Cash's hurt go listen. It is awesome. The shift of perspective from addict to old man remakes the song completely without changing any of the words.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

NME publishes contentious list of editors' favourites and mysteriously gain a lot of hits (of the webular variety) shocker.

Besides, they're all wrong. The worst cover ever is Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" and the best is The Gourds' "Gin & Juice".

I've got my mind on my money and my money on my mind!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not editors' but readers', I believe. Anything decided bt 15000 votes must be democratic, right?

the best is The Gourds' "Gin & Juice"

One I feel I missed out on slightly by knowing that cover before I'd ever heard the original.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I hope you're shortly going to present us with an in-depth statistical analysis of these poll responses?

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

Or possibly just force a copy of Nirvana Unplugged on half your readership?

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

4.)This is an odd one and the origional doesn't really exist. I knew it wasn't actualy credited as Hendrix though.

6.) I fought the law....I knew *A* cover before the clash version as it was one of those songs that had almost permiated into folk song like status, but i couldn't have told you who did it....I'm also guessing (after wiki) that most people wouldn't know the origional version, just an earlier famous cover

7.) Don't know the cover. But i'm presuming it is a version of the Leonard Cohen trac, which is awesome. I'm now hunting the cover version.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah is great - though in that case I knew it before I knew the Leonard Cohen song. I presume you found it quickly, it's not exactly obscure :)

(If you missed the Alexandra Burke cover of the song a couple of Christmasses ago, I advise you to keep it that way.)

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Most of the time, I don't know who's singing stuff, and when I do, I'm almost always wrong about whether it's a cover or an original. My best howler was 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' as a Guns and Roses original.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not as howlsome as the young lady who, in hendybear's car, demanded to know who was doing the "awful Sheryl Crow cover" and had it pointed out none-too-gently that actually G'n'R did Sweet Child O' Mine first :)