cover dilution
Now if you're familiar with my taste in music, you know that I have a fondness for covers. The more bizarre, inventive, and outright batshit insane the interpretation, the better. (It probably doesn't reflect well on me that my favorite version of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is this one.) However, even I appreciate that there are some songs that get covered straight so many times--covers of covers of covers--that the original fades into obscurity, and the only version of the song that anyone under 30 remembers is a soulless, overworked copy of a copy. It happened with Solomon Linda's "Mbube" ("The Lion Sleeps Tonight"), Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi", The Lovin' Spoonful's "Do You Believe In Magic," and even Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927"; the versions that today's radio listeners and mp3 pirates associate with those songs have lost a lot in translation. This is not a new problem; it has obviously been going on much longer than I have been alive. However, it's always striking when I hear a song I consider to be very very old, and discover that it is even older.
Take Air Supply's "Without You," for example. About two decades ago it was my mom's favorite song; she used to play on a little boom box whenever she was doing housework. Now I grew up to detest Air Supply--they're a British-Australian band so diabetically sentimental that their albums only sold in Asia--but that particular song has always stuck with me. Despite the overwrought vocals, the overengineered piano and guitar bits, and the over- and excess- everything about that song there was an emotional center to it that for Air Supply was, I don't know, honest. In its desperate lunge for my heartstrings it actually managed to touch something--and not just because I associate it with early childhood. There was real beauty to that song, buried underneath the wailing vocals, the over-understated piano, the jarring change in key. And I didn't know until tonight that it was because there really was a good song under there--the Air Supply version was a cover of a cover--and, on top of that, a really sad story. One that involves Paul McCartney, bad business, and suicide.
This is the original:
Lots of other people have topped charts with covers of this song, including Mariah Carey, Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, and most notably Three Dog Night lyrics writer Harry Nilssen--but I like this one best.
Take Air Supply's "Without You," for example. About two decades ago it was my mom's favorite song; she used to play on a little boom box whenever she was doing housework. Now I grew up to detest Air Supply--they're a British-Australian band so diabetically sentimental that their albums only sold in Asia--but that particular song has always stuck with me. Despite the overwrought vocals, the overengineered piano and guitar bits, and the over- and excess- everything about that song there was an emotional center to it that for Air Supply was, I don't know, honest. In its desperate lunge for my heartstrings it actually managed to touch something--and not just because I associate it with early childhood. There was real beauty to that song, buried underneath the wailing vocals, the over-understated piano, the jarring change in key. And I didn't know until tonight that it was because there really was a good song under there--the Air Supply version was a cover of a cover--and, on top of that, a really sad story. One that involves Paul McCartney, bad business, and suicide.
This is the original:
Click to viewLots of other people have topped charts with covers of this song, including Mariah Carey, Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, and most notably Three Dog Night lyrics writer Harry Nilssen--but I like this one best.