Case in point: the title track of 2002’s My Ride’s Here. However, despite his brilliance, it was often the case that Zevon’s music couldn’t match up to his lyrical prowess. His brand of literary cynicism is something that few have come close to matching. Warren Zevon will go down in the books as one of America’s most underrated songwriters. Bruce Springsteen – “My Ride’s Here” (Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon, 2004) Drake’s original version is a gorgeous folk ballad, but these Mexican proggers took the already great song and made it so that its dark echoes will ring in the brain days after hearing it.Ħ. The recording is not entirely acoustic there are some psychedelic guitar washes that add to the dark allure of the track, but the song is predominately occupied by Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s falsetto and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s fingerpicking. The iTunes edition of the album, however, closes with this track, which serves both as a good calming down of the record’s grandstanding and as a captivating cover version. The Bedlam in Goliath is emblematic of the Mars Volta’s excessiveness - at close to an hour-and-a-half of crazed, time signature-shifting prog, the record is a wearing listen. This cover actually adds a few extra instruments to that recording, but in doing so the song becomes something quite haunting. The Mars Volta – “Things Behind the Sun” (The Bedlam in Goliath, 2008)Īdmittedly, the initial recording of Nick Drake’s “Things Behind the Sun” was quite stripped-down.
Given how good this is, the clear answer to that question is no.ħ. The high-pitched falsetto in the chorus of Gnarls Barkley’s version is replaced by LaMontagne’s more inquisitive turn here, it sounds much more like he’s seriously wondering if he is crazy.
There’s a longing in the song as a result of LaMontagne’s slightly husky delivery as well as the key change, which shifts the tune’s tone from soulful to yearning. Folk balladeer Ray LaMontagne’s version of the song remains the best of the covers, having much to do with the emotive power present in his re-interpretation. Gnarls Barkley’s soul-laden 2006 hit “Crazy” was an instant smash upon its release, which no doubt contributed to the large number artists who chose to cover it, the Violent Femmes most notably.
I based my picks on songs that were either (a) entirely acoustic or (b) dominated by and large by acoustic instrumentation. Note: Some of these tracks are not entirely acoustic, but in the cases in which there are non-acoustic instruments, they are not the central instrument in the song. As it turns out, unplugged covers aren’t just for bad coffee houses. Ranging from folk to psychedelia to piano confessional, these songs all attest to the ability of music to unite people with distinct voices.
The following 10 songs are prime examples of tracks that not only stand as great songs in their own right, but also as powerful re-interpretations of already great tunes. Though technically not a “cover”, that track nonetheless demonstrates the malleability of a song once it has been released. Ocean took the music of “Hotel California”, a classic image of American societal decay, and sung over it lyrics about the decay of American romance. The Eagles’ “Hotel California”, a song coming mostly from the white-dominated ’70’s California rock, was masterfully re-interpreted this year in the song “American Wedding” by Odd Future crooner Frank Ocean. It seems that the notion of deconstruction is quite an accurate description of a song, for now a song written in one genre can be entirely re-interpreted in another. Covering another artist’s song is a fantastic way for someone to demonstrate his or her musical skill in light of another’s.
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