Bruce Springsteen is a natural fit for bluegrass. I realize this may sound sacrilegious to the followers of a man who defined late ’70s and ’80s rock, and who can still fill stadiums for four-hour concerts where thousands of fans scream along to anthems “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run.” But he’s already gone down that path in recent years, flexing his folk muscles in his 2005 album Devil & Dust and his 2006 album of Pete Seeger covers, singing with his natural gritty twang and switching his electric guitar for an acoustic one.
Even the Boss’s earlier music had hints of folk influences. Just listen to “I’m On Fire,” his moody, synthesizer-heavy track off of “Born In The U.S.A.,” where he aches for a woman to cool his desire. If you shed away the ‘80s keyboard sound and emphasize its steady drum beat and folk guitar melody, the song has room in the bluegrass genre. And in today’s bluegrass resurgence (check out how many bluegrass festivals there are around the country right now), I keep turning to one cover, which I admittedly listen to more often than the original. It’s from Town Mountain, a string band based out of Asheville, North Carolina. They dropped the synthesizer, added a banjo, a fiddle, and another singer for harmony, and made a gem:
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A few weeks ago, a reader insisted, “It’s only fitting that each candidate gets a theme song that’s truly representative.” So far we’ve gotten entries for Trump, Sanders, and Cruz. Here’s one for Clinton—Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl,” which a pair of Clinton supporters mashed up with footage of her from several decades:
The reader adds, “If this video is truly independent, Team HRC needs to find these folks and hire them.” Update: The original video was removed from YouTube, so I replaced with a new copy, but if that gets removed too, here is the original Bikini Kill music video.
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Jason in Portland, Oregon, sends a loooong song for the series:
One of the most radically inventive covers I’ve ever heard is Miles Davis’ version of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song “Guinnevere,” which was featured on The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions. The original CSN version, which clocks in at a little less than five minutes, has held up very well over the decades despite its typical-for-the-time, fantasy-themed lyrics, mostly due to its intricate tonal play and guitar work. David Crosby once remarked that it “might be my best song.”
In the hands of Miles Davis, those tones get unraveled and explored in intimate detail, trading dense instrumentation for a sensuous, hazed-out journey that gives it a whole new life. Even at 21 minutes long, the trip seems over too soon.
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Everybody knows the Rolling Stones’ album Exile on Main St. (If you don't know it, immediately stop reading, obtain the album and listen to it.) What you don't know is that Pussy Galore did a track-by-track cover of the album in ’86. Only 550 copies were released on cassette. It’s full of tape hiss and noise, sounds like it was recorded in a closet that had no acoustics, no one can play, everyone is off key when they sing and apparently they understood Mick’s mumbles about as well as I did since at various points; they just stop singing altogether. By any objective standard, it’s awful. (And NSFW)
And yet …
Stripped down to almost incoherence, every song reveals its primal heart. Listening to this, it’s obvious why Exile is likely the greatest rock & roll album ever recorded.
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One of my favorite cover songs is also an old standard, “Cry Me a River.” Julie London made it famous, I believe, and Ella did a terrific job, in her prime. Somehow, though, only a few years later, the late, great Joe Cocker saw a spark of soul in this song and made a gospel-tinged, blues-shouter version for the ages. Mad Dogs and Englishmen, indeed.
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A reader gets the new series going with a classic:
In terms of covers that are completely different from the original yet stand on their own as classics, I submit for your approval: “Try A Little Tenderness”—Otis Redding’s version. A lot of folks don’t know that the song was originally an old show tune. Bing Crosby did a version.
Which sounds like it’s from a different planet compared to Redding’s soulful 1966 version, as does a subsequent one from Engelbert Humperdinck. An orchestral version was used for the opening credits of Dr. Strangelove to serenade the mating ritual of mid-flight refueling.
On the flip side, one of the most famous songs of the 1960s, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” was originally Redding’s. She also covered “Try a Little Tenderness.”
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I love all kinds of music, but I particularly love covers. There’s the “what the heck?” cover—e.g., who would have guessed that U2 are huge ABBA fans? There are all those millions of tribute albums (a particularly good one is “I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen”). But my favorite type of cover is when something completely new is done with the song. Probably the most famous example is Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower,” which so improved on Bob Dylan’s original that even he does it “Jimi’s way” now.
But my favorite example of a song being reinterpreted is “Superstar.” The song was written by Bonnie Bramlett (of Delaney & Bonnie fame) and Leon Russel and was initially done by Rita Coolidge way back in 1970. It’s an emotional telling of a women in love with a man who’s seemingly forgotten her on his climb to rock stardom. It’s been covered many times since then (I personally own five versions), most famously by The Carpenters. But my favorite cover is by Sonic Youth, who turn the song into the creepy tale of a stalker.
Embedded above. My favorite mini-cover of “Superstar” is from Girl Talk, a mashup DJ and one of my all-time favorite artists, who sampled the song on “Like This,” the seventh track off Feed the Animals (starting at the 2:07 mark).
So what’s your favorite, most inspired cover story that veers significantly from the original? Let me know at [email protected]. Update from our reader above:
Chris, you name checked Girl Talk!!!
Not only that, but my favorite track from my favorite album of his. I almost included it here, but I figured no, since Girl Talk is mashing up someone else’s cover. (And just let me say that whenever I hear Karen Carpenter doing “Superstar,” I always segue way into Metallica’s “One” in my head.) And I just want to give a shout out to my oldest, Aaron, who is the one who turned me onto Greg Gillis.
Back in December 2007, when I was interning at The Atlantic, I freelanced a piece for Campus Progress about Gillis and the copyright threats he had to contend with:
In early 2007, the Pittsburgh native met a powerful ally: his congressman, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA). Luckily for Gillis, Doyle is the vice chairman of the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee and a progressive on copyright issues. Kenneth DeGraff, one of Doyle’s young staffers and a huge fan of Girl Talk, introduced his boss to the mash-up star. [Kenneth was one of my housemates at the time, and our mutual fandom over Girl Talk might have been the deciding factor in me securing a room there, as we bonded over his music at the open house.]
During a memorable hearing, Doyle stumped on the floor of Congress for both his young constituent— “a local guy done good”—and the mash-up genre in general. “[M]ash-ups are transformative new art that expands the listener’s experience,” Doyle told his befuddled colleagues—few of whom had heard of mash-ups, let alone Girl Talk.
Since then, the unlikely duo has garnered a great deal of media attention, including profiles in Newsweek and Rolling Stone online. The latter dubbed the congressman “Girl Talk’s biggest fan,” a title given more weight in September when Doyle attended his first Girl Talk show at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C. “What Gregg did on stage was nothing short of amazing,” recalled the silver-haired statesman, who came dressed in business casual and wielding a camera phone. “You can’t watch him perform and deny the fact that he’s creating something new and different out of the samples stored on his computer.”
Girl Talk truly is best experienced live, since he’s known for playing in the middle of crowds, rather than on a stage, and flailing around like everyone else. I’ve seen him perform four times, and after one of his shows in Manhattan, my friends and I were having a going-away dance party for a friend later that night in Brooklyn. Around 3 a.m., suddenly Greg Gillis himself appears at the door, to the astonishment of everyone. Once we realized it wasn’t an drug-fueled vision, Gillis said he and his friend were simply walking nearby and heard his music being played, so he thought he’d investigate. Talk about strange coincidences.
1) “Keep Hope Alive,” The Crystal Method, off their Vegas album (also the soundtrack for The Replacement Killers). When I worked in downtown South Bend, Ind., I ran in Howard Park, which runs along the St. Joseph River and includes a dam and a race waterway/fish ladder and old mills and factories sited on the river that have been turned into apartments among other things. So there is a lot of twisting and turning and little footbridges to run over as well as bridges that carry traffic over the river to run under. It always reminded me of being a little kid just running around outside in a particularly cool backyard. The starts and stops and twists and turns in this track match the mood, plus you feel like Chow Yun Fat or Mira Sorvino escaping gunmen bent on your destruction.
2) “Hope Runs Deep,” Steve Jablonsky, Gears of War 2 soundtrack. The guy who did the music for Transformers also did the music for Gears of War 2, a game that no one in my household plays. Full of anvils and heavy strings and big brass and deep-voiced Viking choirs, it brings to mind straight-to-DVD movies about special ops forces where one guy always gets shot but tries to keep up, shouting “Go on! Save the men!” but manages to stagger along, shouting “I CAN MAKE IT,” which is how I more or less feel by the end of an eight-miler. Helps me stagger along.
3) “Beethoven (I Love To Listen To),” Eurythmics, Savage. One of the group’s weirder singles, but a nice driving beat. At the start of the playlist, it’s optimistic. In the middle, it’s a challenge. If you put it at the end, you’ll feel like that guy in the straight-to-DVD special ops movie and should just skip ahead to “Hope Runs Deep.”
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In my glancing attempt to combine themes from both holidays this weekend, here’s one of my favorite songs off the Dead Presidents soundtrack, from The O’Jays. This I didn’t know:
“Love Train” entered the Hot 100’s top 40 on 27 January 1973, the same day that the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The song’s lyrics of unity mention a number of countries, including England, Russia, China, Egypt and Israel, as well as the continent of Africa.
Official music video here. (Above is the O’Jays performance on Soul Train.)
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As I’ve been running, I’ve thought if other songs to share, like Kishi Bashi’s “Philosophize In It! Chemicalize With It!” No matter how tired I am, I will run my heart out for that song.
Thanks for making this list; I’ve found several great songs that I’ve added to my personal playlist.
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Here’s one that I’m sure hasn’t been mentioned: Ben Folds Five’s “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces.” It’s the best track to end on, especially when you need that extra kick. How many workout songs have that much piano in them?
“Army” from Ben Folds has been on my running playlist for years.
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But the weirdest song—I can’t even remember where I first heard it—is Plaisir de France’s “Le Responsable Revisite.” I can’t even buy this anywhere! So I have to have it queued up on YouTube to work it in, but that’s how good it is.
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