There are competing opinions among music connoisseurs about cover songs. There’s the purist camp who say to leave well enough alone. Then there’s the “Go For It But Make It Your Own” school of thought — that's folks who want to hear covers go somewhere else. Finally, there’s the “Yes, But Don’t Color Outside The Lines” group, who want to hear cover songs performed pretty much as they were.
I’m mostly in the second group, but am not offended by the third. I like to see artists take original material and add their own style to it, or re-invent it entirely.
This year there were some notable covers that stood out.
- Fiona Apple did a solid, mostly straight cover of Neil Young’s Heart of Gold. It was the title track to a various artists collection of Neil Young tunes. Putting a feminine voice on a classic made me enjoy it again.
- Kara Grainger covered a Meters song - Doodle Loop (The World is a Little Bit Under the Weather). No one is as funky as the Meters, but Grainger gives it more of a big blues feel that really works.
- Stacy Antonel & The Seahorses did a surf rock version of Stand by Your Man that surprised me. Antonel has roots in California but is now in Nashville. She and the Seahorses, a group of sought-after session musicians who add a bit of surf rock, punk, and jazz to country music, reinvented the Tammy Wynette original giving it a fresh vibe.
Without renewed versions of songs, about half of jazz wouldn’t exist, and no one alive has ever heard Bach perform Toccata and Fugue in D minor, so I feel no shame in enjoying a well-remade song.
On Open Air, we like to spin good cover tunes among the new and original music we play. Hear us weekdays 9am-3pm on JPR's Rhythm and News Service.
