Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
OK, so Cover Me has found five good covers of “Get Lucky”before, a decade-plus ago, but given it was then appended “So Far,” I felt it allowable to repeat and reprise, with all new songs.
I absolutely love “Get Lucky,” popping up forever on radio and on shop playlists. I loved it in 2013, the year Daft Punk released it, and I’ve loved it ever since. But the difficulty, for me, was always in the tracking it down. Even with good old Shazam I was suspicious. I couldn’t believe it was actually by some weird helmeted French electronic duo. Shazam must be wrong, I thought, convinced it was more akin to the sound of Nile Rogers and the extended Chic diaspora he created, courtesy the inescapable scrub of guitar that he has made his own. It took me actually buyingRandom Access Memory to get to grips with the truth, and to confirm that, yes, it was Rogers on guitar, along with Pharrell Williams on vocals, half of the pre-eminent music production team, the Neptunes.
A number one single across most of the world, surprisingly “Get Lucky” only ever made #2 in the US, albeit for 5 consecutive weeks (damn you, “Blurred Lines”!). Multiple awards came as a deserved matter of course, including Best Song and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, at the Grammys. Lyrical scrutiny was less a concern in those days, with the chorus so damn catchy that all were happy to sing along, whether or not there was much realization about what the “Get Lucky” may be addressed toward. Mind you, with the singer suggesting the content innocent and relating more to the good fortune of meeting with and immediately connecting to someone, who was going to argue. With the slightly changing repetitions, many may have never actually latched on to the full lyrical, if you will, thrust, only learning the truth via so many karaoke machines.
Continue reading »
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
Some songs have an adaptive trait that allows it to survive out in the musical wild. Trends come and go, stylistic sea changes surge and retreat, and tech revolutions rise and fall; they cause other great songs to fall to the wayside, while the truly classic song only gains luster as time goes by. For me, “Time After Time” is one of those songs.
I grumble every year at this time about the wrong artists getting into the Rock Hall of Fame. (What I really mean is that my favorite performer has once again been overlooked.) But this year I’m glad for Cyndi Lauper getting inducted. When you write and record a song like “Time After Time,” a song covered by Willie Nelson, Miles Davis, and over 400 other artists, you are richly deserving of the honor. (It should have happened in 2023, when Lauper was first nominated, but we’ll let that go.)
“Time After Time” (co-written with Rob Hyman) is just one of Lauper’s many achievements. In fact, the song is not even her best-seller–that’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Nor is it the song of hers I like best–that would be “All Through the Night.” But it’s “Time After Time” that looms largest in her catalog, and that’s because it has entered the American Songbook.
Nowthat’s a true honor. Sales figures and popularity polls don’t get you into the American Songbook. There’s no selection committee involved. A song like “Time After Time” becomes a standard only gradually, after thousands of musicians decide individually it’s a song they want to play. Jazz singers, folk artists, pop stars, rockers, even bluegrass banjo pickers have added the song to their set lists, and to their albums. Pros and semi-pros have played it at countless wedding parties, and amateurs have played it at countless more open mics and karaoke nights.
For a song that was recorded almost as an afterthought (the label insisted the album was one track short), “Time After Time” has done pretty well for itself. It was nominated for, but did not win, the Grammy award for Song of the Year. The winner that year was Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” and that was almost certainly the right call in 1985. But in all the decades since, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” has been covered only 40 times, compared to over 400 covers of “Time After Time.” Songs move through the culture in mysterious ways.
Here are five adaptations of Lauper’s signature song (or one of her signature songs). Each one is worth a second listen as we ponder what makes “Time After Time” impervious to time itself.
Continue reading »
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
Our journey through the Oscar-winning songs of the 1980s brings us to “Up Where We Belong,” the 1983 winner. Read about Christopher Cross’s “Arthur’s Theme”here.
A brash, cocky individual, who travels by motorcycle and who appears to think of little but himself, arrives at a Naval Aviator school on the US Pacific Coast. He encounters tough love from a father figure / instructor and the love of a woman who is emotionally and intellectually smarter than he is. He is part of a system exquisitely designed to find the best in people, and discard them if it is not there, bringing him to a place where he is a much better person. During breaks from elevating himself and saving the nation, he can let off steam in a special tavern, where the jukebox always has the right song available. A classmate is tragically lost during the process. The protagonist is ultimately ready to defend and elevate his nation in its time of need. The sacrifice and Military Method have won out.
An Officer and a Gentleman was a huge movie in 1982, and those of us around at the time could not miss its presence. Young men in ersatz dress uniform were regularly carrying young women around city centers, or TV shows (in the years before Internet memes). Richard Gere was the idol of the day. However, the movie was soon eclipsed by Top Gun, which drew upon aspects of the story and added layers of bombast and more modern sexual politics. Of course, the main thing that the 1986 movie added was sexy shots of planes and boats, which required a relationship with the Navy. Could they have achieved that relationship without the sizzle reel of a multiple Oscar-winning film? Simpson and Bruckheimer, along with Tony Scott, certainly set their ambitions higher. It ultimately worked for all parties, as the Navy saw a bump in recruitment and Top Gun became a cultural phenomenon. There was probably not a rush for paper mill jobs after Officer.
Another similarity between the two films was the use of emotive music, and how integral it was to each movie. Director Taylor Hackford is a musical sophisticate, and directed Jamie Foxx inRay, but he had a limited budget for the soundtrack in this case. The jukebox in the bar contains Van Morrison, Pat Benatar and Dire Straits. The cheesiness of the music at the Officers’ mixer is very specific. Hackford hired Jack Nitzsche to do the soundtrack. But he did not have a hook for the final, climactic scene. Despite its schmaltzy nature, and against the better initial judgement of the director and probably, a few lines of the Naval Code of Conduct, the arrival of Gere, in his first act as an officer and in an iconic Dress White Suit, at the factory where his lover worked to rescue her from a life of drudgery was loved by test audiences and had to stay in. But you needed the music to drive the point home. Nitzsche initially struggled, but then his then-wife, Buffy Sainte-Marie, let him use her work in progress, “Up Where We Belong,” which seemed to fit the mood and theme. With lyrics from Will Jennings, emphasizing that love (or person or Country) can lift us all, with the implication that the Navy can elevate the nation, the complete package was a winner.
Jennifer Warnes already had one Oscar-winning song to her name (“It Goes Like It Goes,” fromNorma Rae), and was immediately in the frame for this opportunity to present the work. Although the piece is not necessarily a two-hander or a call-and-response, Warnes thought it might work as a duet. Her choice as a partner, as she had some leverage, was Joe Cocker. Who wouldn’t want to work with him? As it happens, lots of people, as his career was in the doldrums. But his powerful voice, honed by years of experience and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, was the perfect foil for Warnes, whose voice was sophisticated but more delicate. There is a dynamic between the powerful but controlled voice of Cocker, and Warnes’ controlled passion. The song could be interpreted as the partnership between Gere and Debra Winger. Or Cocker could be a representation of Lou Gossett Jr., the Staff Sergeant whose apparent hard heart was just a man who wanted the Navy to only have the best in their ranks. It could be the nation itself, battered and bruised by military escapades, but still standing tall. Overall, the package was a winning one, reaching the Top of the Charts and taking the 1983 Best Song Oscar, with Olivia Newton-John doing the presenting honors.
There have been many covers over the years, here are Five of the Best.
Continue reading »
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
Johnette Napolitano knew she had something good, but she wasn’t ready to finish it. She had a boyfriend, Wall of Voodoo guitarist Marc Moreland, whose alcoholism made their relationship a trying one. She and her band, Concrete Blonde, had recorded a rough demo and “right away everybody reacted to it,” she later said. “There weren’t any lyrics, but there was something about the music that everybody really reacted to.”
The song was going to have lyrics, though – and they were going to be about Moreland. “I knew what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t looking forward to saying it,” Napolitano said. The music was ready, and the producer kept pushing her for the lyrics. She put him off and put him off until she had no other songs left to record. Finally, in the back of a cab on the way to the studio, she set down the words to “Joey,” which would become the band’s biggest hit.
“I was flooded with mail after ‘Joey,'” Napolitano said, “about everybody who had known that story, lost a buddy, or had a relationship with an alcoholic. It was a big lesson – the closer you get to the truth or are vulnerable with it and express it, the more universal it is.”
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
When “Halo” was released as single, in January of 2009, it became a massive worldwide hit for Beyoncé, but was far from the most successful of the her songs, attaining only, for her, a lowly #5 in the US chart. It was elsewhere that it received grater acclaim, with such disparate statistics as a 13x platinum certification from Australia, making it one of the country’s highest, and the most-played song, 2000 – 2010, on Brazilian radio. Not bad, given only one year within which to beat all the others and olders.
Ryan Tedder and Evan Bogart (with some apparent input from the singer) wrote “Halo” to give a personal flavor to the image of Beyoncé away from the spotlight, minus all the media razzmatazz. Not that there wasn’t some controversy; other performers suggested that the arrangement was recycled from songs written earlier, for Kelly Clarkson and Leona Lewis. All the more intriguing is the suggestion that the song’s premise was based on “Shelter,” a 2004 song by Ray LaMontagne, an artist in about as opposite a field as you could find. (See what you think.)
It has attracted a fair amount of attention in Coverland over the years, and there are north of a hundred versions out there. Many do little than retread the boards, but that is only to be expected. No real outliers, sadly, from the nether fringes of musical tastes: no Tuvan throat singing, no Celtic punk, and nothing remotely Bardcore. Of course there are some stinkers, with some Norwegian black metal from Leo Moracchioli gaining the coveted overall prize for theabsolute nadir. So, bypassing those, let’s go for the zeniths.
Continue reading »
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
The song is older than you might suppose, originally released in October 1985, the lead single for the Waterboys’ third albumThis Is the Sea, Oddly it didn’t even perform that well, first time around, with an Australian #12 the height of initial success. However, boosted by a belated Ivor Novello award, for best song musically and lyrically, in 1991, it was re-released. This time it cracked the UK top echelon, if at #3.
Intriguingly, it did not trouble the US charts on either occasion, it arguably takingFiona Apple to break the song in America, singing it on the soundtrack of TV seriesThe Affair towards the end of 2019. Here are some lesser-known versions:Continue reading »
