When Covers Don't Suck

How to NOT mess up a song

Short post. Song-based. Niche. It just struck me today how many great songs have been covered terribly, and conversely how many original renditions have been superseded by famous covers… but how sometimes songs with an excellent first version may then get covered in a way that makes you think: okay, that was worth doing.

Here’s three, as an invitation to share any more you can think of…

Under Pressure

Freddie Mercury and David freakin’ Bowie? Are seriously going to cover that? And yet here are The Used and My Chemical Romance taking it to the emo-rock side and — for me at least — absolutely not fucking it up.

I Try

Macy Gray’s original is a slice of 1990s pop fabulousness. But here’s Ben Harper, taking it in a more intimate direction and once again not fucking it up.

Love Hurts

This was actually the song that triggered this whole thought, but I’ve just discovered that this entire farrago of a sham of a Substack post falls apart over the fact that the Parsons/Harris version I’d assumed to be the original actually wasn’t: the Everly Brothers sang it fourteen years before, and so in fact the Parsons/Harris recording was already effectively a cover (and a better one than the original). Never mind.

You might think Gram Parsons’ and Emmylou Harris’s take should be left in peace. And yet… I’ve made no secret of my respect for Keef on these pages, but even I would shy from describing him as a vocalist of significant talent. But here he is at the tribute gig for Parsons, with a simple, heartfelt, deep-inside-the-words interpretation that makes you realize “Oh, he can deliver, on the right song.” Add to that Jones’s very different voice — she starts off nervously, even mis-pitches once early on, but then they start to really work together — and the result is genuinely striking, despite (or perhaps even because) of the fact Richards presents so much like something undead that’s staggered in from the local graveyard for one final karaoke performance.

So what have you got? Covers of songs that were great to start with but which nonetheless make you think… okay, that was actually a good thing to do.