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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

I don't imagine valkyriekaren was arguing that Hendrix's version was the original. The concept of "cover" just doesn't exist with a traditional song, so Hendrix's version can't be considered a cover if the song is traditional.

[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 :)

[zotz]

If it's been all over the shop, then it's a standard rather than a cover.

Scarborough Fair's a surprisingly old song, and exists in lots of versions with lots of related pieces also. The same's true of St James' Infirmary, and probably many others too.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

S&G's version relies heavily on the arrangement written by Martin Carthy, but a) he always said it was traditional, and fell out with them about it and b) they did deserve a copyright credit because of the Canticle part of their recording, which makes it hard to untangle SF from the rest of the track. It exists in recognisable form in the 19th century, though, so I'm not sure who is being credited with rewriting it in your half-anecdote. I'd like to know more!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

There's versions of the riddle elements going back to about the seventeenth/eighteenth century at least. It's possible that the refrain was added or borrowed from another song, though.

(If I was at home I could dig out my English Book of Penguin Folksongs, Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes and Child's Ballad Book to answer this more fully.)

Update: OK, home now with time on my hands!
Leache's Ballad Book suggests two sources: a 17thC broadside called 'The Elphin Knight', which has the chorus 'Blaw wind blaw/ the wind hath blaw my plaid awa' which contains many of the same riddles, though differently phrased (e.g. "It's you maun mak a sark for me /without any cut or seam, quoth he"). The second was collected in America in the 19thC and has the more familiar riddle lyrics (e.g. "Can you wash it in yonder well / where water ne'er ran or rain ever fell") and a nonsense chorus ("teaslum teaslum templum / fluma luma lokey sloomy") which MAY be Gaelic in origin.

Now, it's pretty obvious from the metre that the 17C version (let's call it A) can't be sung to anything like the tune of Scarborough Fair. However, the 19thC version (B) definitely can. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the song we now know as Scarborough Fair was written as a broadside ballad in 17thC, drawing on a rich tradition of English riddle lyrics dating back to at least 9thC, and that it was given a then-fashionable Scottish/Jacobite flavour with the business about plaids. It was then picked up in Scotland and/or Ireland and conflated with an existing tune and Gaelic chorus, and went to America to become version B - and may have survived in the UK also - with the chorus degenerated to gibberish. Someone (possibly Carthy) collected it, added the framing narrative about visiting the true love in Scarborough, and 'made sense of' the now nonsense chorus.

[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?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

No, but then you can legitimately answer the question, at least. I know the traditional folk song, and I know his version, and they are two distinct versions, ergo the traditional is the original, and any other version must be 'the cover' for the purposes of the question. No?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, if Will happens by here he might tell us more!

He led me to understand that Martin Carthy's arrangement differend quite substantially from anything which existed formerly. He may have been wrong or I may have misunderstood, though!

[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.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't think so, not really. I mean yes, for the purposes of the question Hendrix's version is clearly "the cover", but my argument is that it shouldn't be appearing in the list at all, because it's merely an evolving version of a standard. Not a cover.

[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.

[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.)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Ah, St James Infirmary - one of the syphilis ballads! Associated with the 'Sailor Cut Down In His Prime' / 'Streets of Laredo' songs.

[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.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Dammit, I knew I should have included a "I'm a unique and special snowflake" button ;)

[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...

[zotz]

You should read that article, if you haven't already. The Smithsonian disk of that family of songs is still available. I scraped it off emusic.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

I think anything by Bacharach/David is bound to lead to special snowflakes :P

Their songs are ones I associate more with the composers than the 'original' artists, so I find the concept of a cover odd in this case.

[venta.livejournal.com]

The whole "family of songs" concept is something I find endlessly fascinating. The other day I was reading about the evolution (http://www.planetslade.com/knoxville-girl1.html) of Knoxville Girl, and had on an LP I'd almost totally forgotten from childhood. It's called Young Hunting and is by the late, lamented Tony Rose. I was surprised to realise that the title song is basically exactly the same song as Nick Cave's Henry Lee.

I knew most of Cave's murder ballads were rooted in traditional songs, but it was still strange to have one suddenly jump out of a song I'd known as a kid.