A Few Cover Songs that Work Despite Themselves

Most artists who perform a cover song tend to be respectful of the original and not go too far afield in their reworking. This can lead to wondering why they bothered, or in some cases, make you scratch your head at the incongruity of the sound. A prime example of this would be Korn's cover of the mid-1980s Cameo song Word Up, where the cadence and phrasing of the original was followed so closely that at times, it sounded like Larry Blackmon's vocals were just clipped and pasted to Korn's backing tracks.

Of course, any musician can step outside their usual genre and be half-assed or joking about it (Pat Boone did a metal album, for example; listen to it and you'll either laugh, cry or do both together), but it takes an exceptional artist to actually create something good in a new genre without wildly trashing the original. Johnny Cash and Tori Amos are masters of this approach; even a casual examination of the artists these two have covered effectively, and with radical alterations in the sound of the original songs would yield Soundgarden, Slayer, Neil Young, Eminem, Glenn Danzig, Nirvana and Nick Cave, just to name a few. Ms. Amos in particular is good at extreme reinterpretations: for her 2001 cover album Strange Little Girls, she uncorked a cover of Slayer's "Raining Blood" that is three times as long as the original, and far creepier than Slayer's guitar-shredding masterpiece.

Because everybody likes lists, I'm going to post a short list of other strange covers and the artists that reinvented them, along with my humble opinion of why they work. Some of these songs have been tackled and re-tackled, but these are the versions that seemed to go in truly different directions.

1. "Stairway to Heaven," Dolly Parton. Everybody who ever picks up a guitar seems to have a go at this one (as lovingly spoofed in Wayne's World), but Ms. Parton is one of the few artists who seems to have truly listened to the song before taking it on. Her version, while far more reliant on banjos and traditional country instrumentation, really hammers on the loneliness behind the eternal seeking that the narrator refers to in the lyrics, and thereby emphasizes the spiritual nature of Led Zeppelin's mighty original. Her lyrical changes emphasize a more Judeo-Christian bent than Robert Plant's, but the listener gets the impression that Plant and Parton would agree more than not on what they seek.

2. "Gin and Juice," The Gourds. By not changing the lyrics a bit, and using a bluegrass arrangement with full-on country twang, the Gourds took a rap classic and made it...well, hilarious. The musicianship is solid, and the song stands just fine as an up-tempo bluegrass ditty, but listening to Snoop's words delivered in Appalachian style is a ticket to chuckles. Well, for me, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

3. "Do You Remember Rock 'n Roll Radio," Kiss. The kabuki boys of hard rock don't actually make any substantial musical or lyrical changes to this Ramones classic from their 1980 album End of the Century. What makes this cover so left field is the fact that Kiss and the Ramones were, in many ways, completely polar opposites in terms of musical approach and philosophy.

4. "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," Creedence Clearwater Revival. Don't get me wrong; Marvin Gaye was an American musical treasure, an undisputed master of soul and R&B, and nobody, then or now, could sing like him. Still, with the 11-minute cover of this Motown great, CCR captured a swampy funk sound here that makes Marvin's original sound anemic, especially when you compare the Motown sound to the bassline-driven lope that John Fogarty and his bandmates brought to it.

5. "State Trooper," Halloween, Alaska. Covering Bruce Springsteen is a risky endeavor; there's a reason he's the Boss. Still, plenty of artists have tried it, ranging from Johnny Cash (who did it at least three times) to Patti Smith to the Pointer Sisters. However, this Twin Cities band, whose first album was high ambience and low in speed, managed to marry an electronic droning sound to the Boss's lyrics and make it seem fitting, nailing the pleading isolation of the original, recorded in acoustic low-fi for Springsteen's 1982 Nebraska album. Excellent stuff.

One of the nice things about cover songs is that they seem to be a near-endless resource; bands are always creating more, and as long as there are legendary musicians, there will be covers strange and wonderful of their work (poor and tacky ones, too, but that's neither here or there).