Three Cover Songs That Show There's Always Room For Improvement

There's no such thing as perfection in any artistic endeavor.  In all the ratings and Rotten Tomatoes it's easy to lose sight of how little objectivity there is in music or movies or paintings or anything else creative.  Mockingjay - Part 1 having the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the Hunger Games franchise doesn't stop me from thinking it's easily the best of the three released so far.  Rolling Stone gave Gary Clark Jr.'s 2013 album an unremarkable three and a half stars but I gave it seven billion plays on Spotify.  (Which amounts to about $1.13 in Mr. Clark's pocket.  I'm sure my Christmas card has been floating around the postal service for the past year.)  It's not just fans and critics.  Two different directors can look at the same script and see two different films.  That's why in a flood of movie remakes it's still remarkable when one comes along with a fresh point of view.  That's why it can be so powerful when a musician puts themselves into someone else's song, for instance:

Glen Campbell's "Times Like These"

Country legend Glen Campbell is the kind of singer who's career is largely built on covers, which was pretty typical in the 60's.  It was especially common in folk and most of Campbell's songs came from folk or country.  In 2008 Campbell released a new album of covers by artists like Green Day and U2, who at the time were almost contemporary, at least for a 72-year-old.  A stand-out was the 2002 Foo Fighter's hit "Times Like These."  It was originally very much a product of its era with its post-grunge crunchy guitar riffs.  Albeit, the Foo Fighters did early 00's crunchy guitars better than anyone.  The Foo Fighters remain titans of rock because frontman Dave Grohl is consistently an astounding songwriter.  "Times Like These" is an eloquent, if slightly dated, song about toiling towards the light at the end of the tunnel. When Campbell performed it he made it timeless.  He infused it with his glorious arena country/pop sound, invoking images of the sweeping Western plains, permeated with optimism and divine opportunity.

Aretha Franklin's "Respect"

 

"Respect" is so closely tied to Aretha Franklin's legacy that the average music fan could almost be forgiven for thinking she originated it.  Not quite though because it was actually first released by one of the very few soul singers who could rival the Queen.  Otis Redding wrote and recorded the song in 1965.  Redding's lyrics are from the point of view of a humble man who pleads for no more than respect from his paramour and only when he's in her presence.  He doesn't care what she does when he's not around.  It's not a very bold stance but 60's soul had a way of making begging seem cool and Otis's voice was exceedingly more masculine and rugged than most.  From his mouth the plea was a fun, swinging ditty.  Then in 1967 Aretha turned it into the feminist anthem it's been known as ever since.  (Here's my impression of Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds if she taught 20th century music history in 2015: "When you think about it, Aretha Franklin was the original female Ghostbuster.")  Franklin adjusted a few lines to change the point of view from a humble man to a proud woman demanding the thing that had been denied her for much too long.  She also made some changes to the structure like spelling the title and those "sock it to me's," making it catchier as well as ten times as powerful.

Nirvana's "The Man Who Sold The World"

David Bowie is known as one of pop culture's greatest chameleons.  In the 70's his scales were the color of a glam rock god.  He ruled the stage like Zeus on Mount Olympus but with even more sexual deviance and presumably much more consent.  He was finely manicured, covered in glitter and mystique and his music reflected that.  Bowie's 1970 album The Man Who Sold The World and its title track, like much of his work from the time, is grandiose and intergalactic.  The song is cosmic and mysterious and finely polished.  21 years after The Man Who Sold The World ushered in glam rock Nirvana's Nevermind did the same for grunge, glam's polar opposite.  However, Kurt Cobain, Krist Noveselic, and a pre-Foo Fighters Dave Grohl were mere mortals who just happened to be the most famous people in the world.  Maybe the only thing grunge and glam have in common is that Cobain was every bit the genre defining icon Bowie was, if not more.  In their iconic acoustic performance for MTV Unplugged Nirvana played "The Man Who Sold The World" and it was a highlight of an overall magnificent recording.  The cover was earthy and accessible, one of many entrances into the mind of Cobain.  Right now there are hundreds of thousands of teenagers who feel more connected to Kurt Cobain in 1993 than anyone they know personally, as many as those who dream of a celestial encounter with a spaceman like David Bowie.