When we get bored of talkin’ sports, my friends and I wander into other areas for booze-addled debates about subjects with no definitive answer, but with the certainly of our convictions. One of those debates involves the “best cover song,” and our consensus choice has generally been “A Little Help From My Friends” by Joe Cocker. Just recently I realized that I had never considered another song because I had no idea it was a cover. That would be Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.”
About a year ago, I learned that the original writer and performer is a woman named Lori Lieberman, whose rendition is different from Roberta’s, but not that much different, and also beautiful:
For reference, here’s Roberta’s cover, and Lauren Hill’s re-cover.
I guess I still have to go with Cocker, not because he did a better job than Flack (who’s to say?), but because he took a silly little Music Hall ditty and transformed it into a blues-rock classic, while Flack just took a beautiful song and made another version of a beautiful song.
I can only think of one case where a band took a really awful song and made it worth listening to, and that’s The Dan Band’s satirical cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart. I guess you could also argue that Me and Bobby McGee was a pretty lame song until Janis Joplin turned it up to 11.
=============
Other popular choices as #1:
Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
Aretha Franklin, Respect (Otis Redding)
Whitney Houston, I Will Always Love You (Dolly Parton)
Gladys Knight, Midnight Train to Georgia (Cissy Houston)
Janis Joplin, Piece of My Heart (Erma Franklin – Aretha’s sister!)
Iz Kamakawiwoʻole, Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Judy Garland)
Ray Charles, any song he ever covered, because he was Ray Fucking Charles.
=================
And of course, William Shatner, Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
Hey, you have to admit Shat made it a completely different song, ala Joe Cocker. Should we penalize him just because it sucked? Not on my watch.
There are a lot of awesome covers out there, but I thought that Disturbed’s cover of “Sound of Silence” was breathtaking. Literally. The first time I heard it I felt like I didn’t breathe for several seconds after it ended. It was as if Simon and Garfunkel’s original was a warning, and this remake was someone being pissed off at the fact that no one listened.
Agree. They did a spectacularly good job.
Consider how much I loved the original, it quite a feat that I actually liked the cover
Me, too, but the real measure of a cover is, “Is it better than the original?”
In the case of Joe Cocker singing A Little Help From My Friends, or Ray Charles singing Georgia on My Mind, the answer is “Yes, for sure, no debate.” Is that also true of Disturbed’s cover of Paul Simon? Fallen definitely thinks so. You too?
I much prefer the original Dolly Parton “I Will Always Love You” (written for her musical partner Porter Wagoner as she went solo) to the plastic Whitney Houston version.
William Shatner’s cover of Mr Tambourine Man is bizarre, but his cover of Pulp’s “Common People” is as good as the original.
I think I may have liked Whitney’s cover when I first heard it. Now the damned thing has become an ear worm. “I-ee-I-ee-I will always …” She really milked that “I.”
It’s the most ee-I’s since “The Farmer in the Dell.”
lol
Old McDonald would like a word….spelled E-I-E-I-O!
Maybe that’s why I never like Houston singing it either. Does nothing for me. I just want to hear people like Otis Redding sing.
I didn’t know Dolly’s original version for years and years after and it was a revelation. Whitney hits those notes but Dolly has the heart of the song.
Love Shatner’s contempt on Common People and mentioned it before but his drunken Feliz Navidad has become a beloved take for me of a song I can’t stand.
I think Cyndi Lauper brings out the passion and desperation in Roy Orbison’s I Drove All Night. Roy’s is beautiful so I don’t know that it replaces it but I think her version reflects the lyrics especially in some of the live versions.
You want to check out The Dickies’ version of Paranoid. They speed it up without losing accuracy in the guitar solo. Makes the Sabbath version sound wan and sludgy.
THERE’s your ‘better than the original’.
In 2002, I took my girlfriend to see an early performance of Dance of the Vampires on Broadway (which starred the Phantom, i.e., Michael Crawford). It was absolutely awful. That wasn’t just my opinion or my girlfriend’s. Two nights later, I took my mom to see Goodnight Gracie, a one man play of Frank Gorshin as George Burns discussing his life. That show was awesome. As my mom and I were waiting for our car at the garage, we ran into the managing partner from my old law firm and his wife. They had just been to see Dance of the Vampire. I told him I had seen it two nights before, and he asked me what I thought about it. “Well, I thought it was a little better in the second act,” I told him. He replied, “I wouldn’t know. We left at intermission.” The reason I thought the second act was better was because it had one decent musical number in it, unlike the first act. But Scoop, you should avoid Dance of the Vampire altogether because that single decent song (which was performed twice) was Total Eclipse Of The Heart.
My favorite Roberta Flack song is “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”–and that’s a cover version, too. It was originally recorded by Peggy Seeger (Pete’s half-sister) in 1962; it was written for her by her future husband, Ewan MacColl.
Agree…she feels it.
Johnny Cash also covered that one with a lot of feeling.
PP Arnold’s version of The First Cut Is The Deepest is the best. Not sure if its considered a cover since it’s technically the original which would mean Cat Steven’s was covering his own song when he released his own version a few years later. The Sheryl Crow cover released some 20 years later meanwhile did not do the song justice despite being more popular than the previous versions
I would also argue that PP Arnold, despite being largely forgotten today, also did the best versions of Different Drum, Angel of the Morning, and The Stones’ As Tears Go By
I would say the following are my favorite covers…and they are both better than the original:
Hurt – Johnny Cash
Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley
Hendrix’ version wasn’t even the best cover of All Along The Watchtower. Dave Mason topped both him and Dylan.
My favorite cover that vastly improves the original is Sinead O’Connors Nothing Compares 2 U. Took a decent song and turned it into something amazing. Improved the music and sang it in a beautiful way that Prince isn’t capable of.
I’m partial to Korpiklaani’s Paat Pois Tai Hirteen. The original version (Peer Gunt’s Bad Boys Are Here) is good but needed more fiddles and accordions.
Good list! Here are some other inarguably superior–let’s say definitive–covers:
Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” (original John Denver)
The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” (original The Top Notes)
Aretha’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” (original Carole King)
I would quibble about “All Along the Watchtower” because Hendrix and Dylan are doing totally different things with the song; in my mind it is rational to prefer either version.
I am also interested in situations where the artists themselves create the definitive cover of their own song. A couple that come to mind are Queen’s Live at Wembley ’86 version of “Love of My Life” and Pete Townshend’s revelatory live acoustic cover of The Who’s “I’m One”.
The best example of a definitive cover with a live version I can think of is Dylan’s live version of Visions of Johanna recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (and not at the Royal Albert Hall as had long been believed.) The original version on Blonde on Blonde is okay, but the live recording with the silence of the audience and the acoustics emphasizing the quiet sound of the song perfectly mirrors the lyrics.
In this room the heat pipes just cough
the country music station plays soft
but there’s nothing, really nothing, to turn off
Other covers by bands that covered their own songs and improved on them (in my opinion)
1,Who Knows Where the Time Goes? Sandy Denny/Fairport Convention (the best British folk rock song)
2.Walk This Way Aerosmith with Run-D.M.C (the best rap song until the best rap song ever, of course, ‘Ice Ice Baby’ – unless you prefer the other genius rap song ‘You Can’t Touch This’.)
I’m serious about Fairport Convention’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes? Being the best British folk rock song, not serious about those two rap songs though, to be fair to them, they are catchy. It’s hard to dislike them.
For what it’s worth, it’s not the best I’m sure, but my favorite rap song is Airplanes by B.o.B with Hayley Williams.
Hey Joe. Lightweight when done by the Leaves and even the Byrds (their Mr. Tambourine should be on this list). But not when Jimi did it.
Two more to consider:
-Pet Shop Boys, “Always on My Mind.” I don’t know if it’s better or worse than the other versions, but it sure is different.
-Blue Swede, “Hooked on a Feeling.” I know it’s cheesy, but in my book any remake of a B.J. Thomas song has to be superior.
No mentions of Roy Orbison…surprised.
House of the Rising Sun ~ The Animals
Shout ~ The Beatles
Trivia: Found out recently Rose Garden ~ Lynn Anderson was written by …
Stephanie Nicks © Welsh Witch Music, Bike Music
carry on …
(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden was written by Joe South who is probably most famous for the song “Games People Play.”
Oh, the games people play now
every night and every day now
never meaning what they say now
never saying what they mean
Games People Play is based on the 1964 book of the same name by Eric Berne. Berne called it ‘transactional analysis’ but it’s really the first book on game theory.
Different “Rose Garden”. The one you’re talking about was written and originally done by Billy Joe Royal. Which, as an aside, was on an album featuring the single “Hush”, which got its own superior cover version when Deep Purple did it a year later.
OK, error… Joe South did write that one.
I agree, Johnny Cash HURT. He made that song his own and it was incredible.
Id add in Nirvana’s cover of “Man Who Sold the World.”
Then there’s the whole phenom of what I call murder covers, where you start with a perfectly decent song, rock the shit out of it, and take it somewhere it never would have gone of its own volition…
The Sid Vicious version of My Way (Frank Sinatra)
Iggy Pop’s One For the Road (Sinatra again) – hard to find but worth the dig
Stevie Ray’s Mary Had A Little Lamb
Black Flag’s Louie Louie (not originally The Kingsmen; I forget who initially did it)
Closer to home, the Soul Asylum version of Goin’ Down (Monkees, not that Jeff Beck one) &
The Replacements’ Little GTO (Beach Boys ?)
Then there’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Polka where Weird Al takes a long medley of songs and murders them all wholesale
Finally, dishonorable mention for the Stormtroopers of Death version of Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust – it runs literally about three seconds
Richard Berry did the original Louie Louie. The only reasons I know the lyrics is that the Kinks covered it on their first album and Sir Ray sung them fairly clearly. As for the Kingsmen, the FBI report still gets the last word: “unintelligible at any speed”.
I don’t know if they’re better than the original, but Gram Parsons did some excellent covers.
1.Sing Me Back Home originally written and recorded by Merle Haggard
2.Love Hurts
And with the Flying Burrito Brothers (Gram Parsons with a number of members of The Byrds)
1.Wild Horses, this version came out before the Rolling Stones version. Gram Parsons was friends with Keith Richards if not other members of The Rolling Stones
2.To Love Somebody, cover of The Bee Gees song when they were a folky type band before disco
Also from country/country rock
1.Townes Van Zandt’s version of the Rolling Stones song Dead Flowers
and
2.The Byrds cover of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” which is arguably the second best Dylan cover after All Along the Watchtower. It improves on the Dylan version from The Basement Tapes but since that was just meant as a demo anyway, I don’t think should be counted as a song that improved on the original.
Terry Melcher’s cover of Jackson Browne’s These Days. Jackson Browne was apparently sixteen when he wrote the song. Terry Melcher, the famous music producer (especially for The Byrds) and A&R man, might be most famous for his relationship with Charles Manson. Melcher was also a very capable musician in his own right. In this song sung with his mother Doris Day on backing vocals, he sounds depressed verging on suicidal and this was likely the case due to his relationship with Manson.
Melcher added in a final verse
Don’t confuse me with all of my problems
Don’t confront me with all of my failures
I’ve not forgotten them.
I’ll take Dylan’s demo over the Byrds’ polished version. McGuinn missed the humor.
Oooh! Speaking of Byrds, the Husker Du cover of Eight Miles High. Not really a drug band, but this version is way more fucked up (in a great way) than the original.
If you haven’t heard it before check out Sandy Denny’s (Fairport Convention) live cover of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.
Also, a pre Bangles Susanna Hoffs in a band called Rainy Day did a very nice cover of Dylan’s I’ll Keep It With MIne.
Of course, everybody knows the best cover version of all time is The Brady Bunch’s American Pie.
William Shatner, Ben Folds, Joe Jackson: Common People by Pulp.
It should not work, but it’s absolutely magic.
Elvis’s cover of Dylan’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time”.
I am truly surprised that nobody noted Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” is a really covered well by Manfred Mann.
Here are a couple more notable covers:
Kiss – Art of Noise w/ Tom Jones (Prince)
True Colors – Phil Collins (Cyndi Lauper)
How Am I Supposed To Live Without You? – Michael Bolton (Laura Branigan, although Michael Bolton actually co-wrote the song)
Come on Eileen – Save Ferris (Dexys Midnight Runners)
La Bamba – Los Lobos (Ritchie Valens)
The Way You Do the Things You Do – UB40 (The Temptations)
Theme from Mary Tyler Moore – Joan Jett (Sonny Curtis)
3 is the magic number – Blind Melon (Schoolhouse Rock)
Well, the Blind Melon one is actually from a compilation of remakes from Schoolhouse Rock. They were all pretty good remakes, as well as the Saturday Morning Cartoon tribute album.
An Honorable Mention goes to Twisted Sister, who covered their own “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with a Mariachi band. Not sure if that counts as a cover though.
And of course UB40’s cover of Neil Diamond’s ‘Red Red Wine’ became the definitive version.
I guess no one here came of age in the early 80s. The Soft Cell version of Tainted Love is so iconic that I would guess that anyone born after 1960 probably doesn’t even know the original version by Gloria Jones. Gloria definitely has the better voice.
Also dating myself with this one, but I prefer The Beat’s version of Tears of a Clown over Smokey Robinson’s version. For North Americans, The Beat were The English Beat.
I’m going to guess that for most people, the version of a song that they grew up with is the preferred version.
Girls Just Wanna have Fun – Cyndi Lauper. She didn’t want to cover it at first because a man wrote it and she felt it was demeaning to women. She turned it into a feminist anthem
All Along the Watchtower by Hendrix was so good Dylan starting using that arrangement himself, basically covering Hendrix.
Two other of Cyndi Lauper’s biggest hits were also covers: All Through the Night originally by Jules Shear who was a very theatrical and mannered performer and Money Changes Everything originally by the Brains.
Which version of Money Changes Everything do you prefer?
“This Flight Tonight” covered by Scottish hard rock band Nazareth, originally composed by Joni Mitchell, from her 1971 album Blue. The transition for the lines “Goodbye baby, baby goodbye, Ooh love is blind” really accentuates the roots in surfer rock of the genre.
Also, “You were on my Mind” covered by folk group We Five, originally composed by a folk duo Ian & Sylvia, but shows how much an effect the rearrangement can make on a song.
As other mentioned “House of the Rising Sun” covered by The Animals. As a folk song originally in 4/4 time, it’s nothing special, but when rearranged to 3/4 time, the song has such a powerful impact it’s hard to imagine it in anything but 3/4 time any more.
Sounds more like 6/8 or 12/8 to me, but I quibble.
Speaking of the Animals, I prefer Santa Esmeralda”s Latin disco version of “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” over the Animals recording, which I find a bit sludgy. (Nina Simone was actually the first to record it.)
Also, the Beatles were mainly a covers band through mid 64 and the Stones through mid 65. Too many good covers to list, but I’ll throw the Beatle’s Money out there for Lennon’s vocal. The Stones did Money too, but their version mainly served to show that Keith’s playing was way behind Brian, Bill, and Charlie.