Turning old songs into our worst nightmares

Turning old songs into our worst nightmares

What’s the Noise?

Michael Tatum

Welcome to the first installment of my column, which purges the
mysteries of all the music that I, and hopefully you as well, love:
rock, rap, punk, country, blues, R&B, jazz, disco, techno,
reggae, soul, African and other "world" music, top 40, and
alternative ­ everything except heavy metal, because, to be
brief, I could live without it. Two related concepts, both from
fellow music critics, state my intent of purpose. The first
originated with my hero, Robert Christgau of the Village Voice:
"Rock criticism should piss people off." The second comes from two
guys I admire from more of a distance, Jimmy Guterman and Owen
O’Donnell: "If you can’t argue about rock and roll, what can you
argue about?"

For those not familiar with what a cover version is, it’s a
reworking of a previously recorded song by another artist. At their
best, they recontextualize a well known song into something
striking and brand new. Jimi Hendrix’s "All Along The Watchtower,"
PJ Harvey’s "Highway 61 Revisited," and the Neville Brothers’ "With
God On Our Side" all take on familiar, folk-rock styled Bob Dylan
classics and, in the best kind of way, make them their own.

Other good cover versions seize unjustly ignored treasures and
rework them from a fresh perspective: R.E.M.’s "Strange"
(originally by the punk band Wire) or En Vogue’s "Giving Him
Something He Can Feel" (an obscure Aretha Franklin tune).

Most however, take a song that made money once, record it in a
commercial and exploitative fashion, and reap the benefits from
compulsive consumers and blissfully ignorant casual music fans. Ten
glaring recent examples of these are listed below:

10.) Mariah Carey "Without You" I know, nobody serious about
music expects anything from this airhead anyway. But don’t you find
it paradoxically amusing that, in a song about the terrors of being
alone, Carey sings with a choir? Even those familiar with the
second most famous version of this song, a No. 1 hit for the worthy
Harry Nillson, don’t know that the song actually originated with
Beatle-wannabes Badfinger. When Pete Ham and Tom Evans sang "I
can’t live/If living is without you," they meant it ­ they
killed themselves within years of each other. Not that suicide
gives you artistic integrity. But I wouldn’t expect this shallow,
born-rich, married-to-the-president-of-Sony-Music pop singer to
feel anything so deep.

9.) Toad The Wet Sprocket "Rock And Roll All Nite" These losers
putting their minimal, sub-R.E.M. talents to this KISS classic
makes about as much sense as Debby Boone covering the Ramones.
Someone should have informed these bozos that the operative words
in that song title are rock ‘n’ roll.

8.) Ugly Kid Joe "Wild World" Contrary to popular belief, this
Cat Stevens stinker was never a good song. Like the also
interminable Maxi Priest version, this one copies the original
arrangement note for note, while the sexist condescension of the
lyrics ­ "I’ll always remember you like a child, girl" ­
still smells foul. No wonder a heavy metal band covered it.

7.) Eric Clapton "Layla" (from "Unplugged") Of course I know
Clapton did the original ­ don’t you think I do my homework?
But let’s face it, the guy singing this song isn’t the same one who
sang the classic 1970 version. Then, Clapton sang with soul and
fire, probably because he burned for the love of his best friend’s
wife, and also perhaps because he was in the grips of a raging
heroin addiction. I don’t blame Eric for getting clean, I do
however blame him for softening up and watering down his music (no
wonder this record won him his first Grammy). This vastly inferior
"Layla" sounds so dispassionate and lifeless it makes you want to
put Eric’s finger into an electrical socket. Perhaps he might have
put more effort into his performance had he been singing about the
cash advance for his next corporate sponsorship.

6.) The Who "Tommy" (from their 1989 live record) Has-been Steve
Winwood as the Hawker? Never-was Phil Collins as Uncle Ernie? The
always-posing Billy Idol as Cousin Kevin? With nobody coming close
to replacing late drummer Keith Moon? I’m not gonna take it.
Granted, this "Tommy" is far superior to the excruciatingly lame
Broadway version (which, like Clapton’s record, won a big award in
its field. See the connection?). But The Who are ­ or used to
be anyway ­ a great rock band. They have less excuse.

5) "Can’t Help Falling In Love With You" UB40 It would be
unthinkable to do a piece about bad cover versions and not mention
these guys ­ after all, they’ve forged a successful career out
of it. After garnering a fluke hit from "Red Red Wine," a Neil
Diamond cover they had recorded years before, they cut the "Labour
Of Love II" album, which, like its predecessor, set non-originals
to their reggae style. But by that time (1989), their style had
become so stale and overproduced, and their song choices were so
obvious, it signified nothing so much as a blatant pandering to the
lucrative "alternative" market, most of whom wouldn’t know a real
reggae tune even if Ziggy Marley was their roommate. This Elvis
Presley re-make, from their most recent record, represented the
absolute rock bottom. Clearly bankrupt of ideas, this formerly
worthy band has been coasting on flimsy ideas and their marketable
image for years.

4.) Duran Duran "Femme Fatale" Simon Le Bon to his bandmates in
a London studio, circa 1992: "Boys, we were exposed as the inane
teenybopper idols that we are years ago, and the 12-year-old girls
who used to buy our albums have grown up, gotten smart, and now
like all those weirdo bands like Nirvana! What are we to do?" John
Taylor: "Let’s cover a Velvet Underground song and pretend like
we’re hip to modern rock ‘n’ roll!" And so they did, turning this
Lou Reed-penned gem into a synth-heavy, emotionally vacant piece of
garbage on their so-called "comeback" record, with LeBon’s
trademark constipated whine the inevitable focus of attention. Now
that they’ve claimed a shiny new generation of 12-year-old girls,
they’re putting together an album of all covers, featuring the
likes of Led Zeppelin’s "Thank You" and Public Enemy’s "911 Is A
Joke." A Flock Of Seagulls, come back, all is forgiven.

3.) Tori Amos "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Nirvana’s classic garage
band original railed against the apathy of their generation. Amos’s
wrongheaded solo piano recital transforms it into a monument of
self-pity, an attack on all those cruel kids who just don’t
understand her (boo hoo). If your idea of rock ‘n’ roll is to sit
at home alone on Friday night, listening to your stereo, and
getting sensitive, this version is for you.

2.) 10,000 Maniacs "Because The Night" With her condescending
I’m-better-than-you air, her impotent three-note range, her
inexplicable drawing out of vowels and her inability to sing
consonants at the ends of words, Natalie Merchant has been on my
personal shitlist for years. I got especially irritated by her
self-serving appearance at the Earth Day forum last year, when she
claimed "the forest was my solace, my cathedral" (oh please) and
treated an earnest, albeit dippy, fan like trash in front of the
entire audience. This grossly ineffective cover of the Bruce
Springsteen-Patti Smith classic stands as her towering achievement.
First, her non-rock backing band, which has also ruined good R.E.M.
and Morrissey songs, generates about as much excitement as a four
hour Econ lecture. Second, Merchant’s chaste delivery, ill-fitting
in a song about sexual passion, couldn’t be less rousing if Barbara
Bush sang it. And third ­ well, "Because The Niiii?" Somebody
wipe out this grossly overrated force of bad music once and for
all.

1.) Whitney Houston "I Will Always Love You" An obvious choice,
I know, but it’s one that can’t be left out. Dolly Parton, who
wrote and sang the timeless original, said it best: "I was
overhearing some people who didn’t know I had written that song.
They said, ‘I didn’t know Dolly Parton was capable of something so
deep.’ I always thought it was kind of simple myself." Ahhh,
simplicity, lucidity, austerity ­ three things the
overwrought, Hallmark-card inspired wife of Bobby Brown could never
understand. Actually, I kind of liked her catchy cover of Chaka
Khan’s "I’m Every Woman" myself.