Apr 122007
Forever Young: The Youth Group
Sugar, Sugar: Mary Lou Lord/Semisonic
Dancing Queen: Redd Kross
Your favorite pop song covered? Discuss!
Forever Young: The Youth Group
Sugar, Sugar: Mary Lou Lord/Semisonic
Dancing Queen: Redd Kross
Your favorite pop song covered? Discuss!
that footage of those skater kids is SO AWESOME!
sally c, were you around for our sugar sugar discussion? check out the gmail account for a whole bunch of covers of sugar sugar (my fave is the one done by brother jt, from early in his stint as Original Sins front man).
as for my fave pop song cover…well…it’s a torch song really, not a pop song, but, i think the white stripes cover of “i just don’t know what to do with myself” is brilliant.
Isn’t it neat? I thought so too! I used to skate down the hill in my grandma’s street on 70s hand-me down boards from my Aunt’s (no back flip kick and really thick, except for this black one that had monkey stickers with captions all over it – like that kitty-cat poster one, hangin’ around or whatever but with monkeys;) – (also how I got my first pair of Puma’s) I’d always come home with scratched up knees and gravel embedded into my legs from hitting a stone about 3/4 of the way down! Ow!
Nope – maybe this was before I “met” the list? 😉 I’m definitely interested though! Never heard that version (don’t think)…
that’s a very rocked up version for sure!
I’m also a fan of shonen knife covering daydream believer!;) Mary Lou Lord just did a version of Baby Blue for her last album and a band from my hometown called the poumons (“the lungs” in french) did great versions of so you wanna be a rock n’ roll star and sunshine superman!
i forgot about the shonen knife cover. pretty fun.
f.o.d. did a great cover of “head over heels” which i highly recommend…
there’s gotta be more good pop covers than this!
I like the Ramones’ “Needles and Pins.”
Aimee Mann did a great “Nobody Does It Better” on a Bond theme comp. from a few years back.
The version of “Fernando” made by Sex Mob is beautiful. An earlier record of theirs. A group called “Queen of Japan” does Kiss’ disco anthem “I Was Made For Lovin’ You.” Also the Scissor Sisters’ “Comfortably Numb” starts brilliantly, but gets, as you would expect, tedious. And the Raincoats’ “Lola” goes through several pendulous swings over time, from trite and twee to pleasant and dan fine. It ends for me on the up side. I like it.
aww – i like the raincoats, and i’ll have to check out that f.o.d. i have a beatles comp called revolution no. 9 – my favorites are: pooh sticks (true life hero), heavenly (it won’t be long) and senseless things (i must be in love), there’s also a really neat pop bacharach tribute on big deal that’s pretty good. did anyone on here like the one that elvis costello released? kojak variety? i bought it thinking that i’d love it, but traded it later… and actually – not to toot mr. mod’s horn, but the GD stiff recs comp is still holding up as the BEST record comp that i’ve received in a long while;) did anyone know about the jellyfish tribute that’s coming out?
Not to get all pince nez on you, but…to get pince nez on you: please define “pop song” and “cover.” Nah, but are there any guidelines I should be keeping in mind as I consider this? I mean, my favorite cover may be Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower”, which takes the worst song on my favorite underrated Dylan album and makes it Jimi’s best song/performance in his rambling catalog, in my not so humble opinion, of course. But the Dylan original doesn’t count as a “pop song,” does it? I will answer the question with more consideration.
slocum, slade’s definitely trying to goad me with these hendrix comments.
SEE what i have to put up with?
slade, is hendrix your new mc5?
by “pop song”, i suspect that sally c meant “hits”, bubblegum, am radio fodder if you will….
sally?
I absolutely LOVE that “Forever Young” vid — but the song wouldn’t have the same impact without those visuals. One of the best matches of sound and picture I’ve seen in a long time. Bravissimo. The Lord “Sugar, Sugar” was okay — only “okay” in my book ‘cuz she brought nothing new to the song, so, you know… okay. The Redd Kross “Dancing Queen” blew — somebody punch that drummer in the head already!
I’m trying to think of great “pop” covers. So many of them are tongue-in-cheek and snarky. Would Husker Du’s cover of the Mary Tyler Moore theme count? The Jam’s “Move On Up” was good. The Stones’ “Just My Imagination.” ZZ Top’s “I Thank You.” Innumerable Beatles covers, certainly. (Why, oh why hasn’t some competent, hard-rockin’ band covered “Drive My Car”?)
I’ll have to think on this. Camper Van’s “Tusk” excesses?
Hmmm… I was mostly thinking pop, but it doesn’t have to be a line in the sand over this topic or anything, just curious what other people hold near and dear – and by cover, I’d like to see a new little twist added to it – I think something like Husker Du’s cover of Love Is All Around definitely counts! And Oats, I definitely remembered that Aimee Mann version from the Bond film! By covered, I’d like to see something done by an artist that adds something new to the song and not a straight off version of something like performing a Britney Spears song, say, just to be ironic and funny about it.
How about this: a band covering a band covering a cover!
Well, Big Mess’ version of “Sound and Vision” from our Christmas record was a cover of a version by a band called the Foibles. I heard them (where else?) on WFMU. I’m sure lots of bands have covered the Stones covering Irma Thomas, or whoever…
Townsman Saturnismine, I’m not trying to goad you into anything regarding Hendrix. You know how I feel about the man and his music:
But hey, the last thing I’d want to do is dig up that dead horse! I love Hendrix in my own way.
So getting back to this pop song cover issue, I’m going to go with…Damn, my Too-Cool-for-School Governor is kicking in bigtime. I’m drawing major blanks. If I like the original pop song, I usually don’t like the cover that much (“Love Is All Around” was a good suggestion, though). If I don’t like the original, I usually don’t like the cover. Here’s one live exception: Once I saw Big Dipper close a set with that cheesy ’80s Fleetwood Mac song, “Sweet Little Lies”, or whatever its title is. For the first time I realized the song was actually good at its core.
I’m sure I’m blanking on something tremendous… Oh, Aztec Camera’s version of “Jump” was highly enlightening!
Richard Thompson covered Oops I Did It Again on his 1000 Years of Popular Music. And Prince’s Kiss. And a whole bunch of other stuff. These versions are not “just” ironic and funny.
On Bob Dylan & The Band’s 1974 live album Before the Flood the version of All Along the Watchtower seems to reference Hendrix’s version.
That’s kinda crazy, I guess the ultimate compliment? When Badfinger were in the studio, Harry Nilsson was in the studio recording his album and was going to cover Without You. He ended up bringing BF in to play the recorded version of the song to them in the dark. BF apparently said they were so blown away by Harry Nilsson’s cover of Without You that they wished they could have seen the song to perform it the way that his version had ended up, (they hadn’t seen it for the potential that it could have until that moment).
This is true. And Oops is a rare case of a cover revealing that it’s actually a good song. Normally, I hate that attitude, which the above versions of Dancing Queen and especially Sugar Sugar ooze.
That’s because Thompson’s version of Oops really does “strip it down,” while usually that’s a catchphrase for playing it badly and yelling.
All that said, Husker Du’s Love is All Around rules.
I’ve kept my mouth shut on that Richard Thompson covers album, but the little bit I heard, “Oops…” included, made me sick in the stomach. It reeked of White Man’s Burden Syndrome, if you ask me, that is, the need to examine and justify the inner meaning of every nugget of pop culture. Thompson sings those songs, if memory serves, like he hasn’t taken a dump in 3 days.
Surely you’ve never been accused of this behavior, Mr Mod.
Did anyone ever see the dB’s cover Lionel Ritchie’s ‘All Night Long’? That helped me tolerate that song in its original form thereafter.
Now you funny too, Townsman Meanstom!
ha. three chord george references. nice. everybodyfunny.
and hey…what about all those killdozer covers, right?
awesomenss…
gotta roll it…
art
Robbie Fulks is another one who takes pop songs and reveals the good song underneath. He does a fantastic version of Cher’s “Believe”. And he does a mean version of “Billie Jean”.
It sounds blasphemous, but I think Elvis Costello and Lucinda Williams rock the hell right out of the original “Wild Horsies”. If you like EC’s voice’s poignancy (I mean if it chokes you up rather than annoy you) you’ll agree this song is a song he should have written, as much as Riot Act or So Like Candy.