Indie acts doing covers of pop/rap/RnB songs: Classic or Dud?

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (163 of them)
"Irony" needn't necessarily mean not-liking-the-song: plenty of the examples here have the aww-shucks irony of bands who may well like the song but nevertheless find something ironic about their own decisions to perform it. (And surely they know good portions of their audiences will be reacting to the same thing.) The same tension is all over the indie/pop divide, a million times over with hip-hop: no matter how much the acts like what's on the other side, they're all crushed and vexed by some sense that they could never actually be what's on the other side. Because actually crossing would be this bold and massive thing: honestly, can you imagine Fran Healy really performing Britney? What sort of over-the-top lunacy could actually inspire that, and how could it not seem ironic? So it becomes a matter of limitations -- the most these bands can do is to approach the songs in the ways they know how. It's not completely fair to expect much more, but you do run into problems: (a) pop songs often sound pretty boring in a strummy earnest style, and yes, they have trouble singing them; (b) the rhetoric of indie can make it seem like the band's implying that the songs are "better" in strummy earnest style, as if through their immense brilliance and sensitivity they've unearthed the gem at the center of this piece of pop "trash"; (c) they just can't help giving it the ironic karaoke shrug. (Yo La Tengo, when playing that soul-disco track off of their last record, would do faux-Temptations dance moves: they wrote the damn thing, and they still had to chuckle and make the announcement, "Look, we're Yo La Tengo and we're doing some vaguely funky pop!")

There should be something just interesting about the practice -- cross-genre covers are usually great, an old thing stylized in a new way -- but it seems as if there are just too many tensions and conflicts running between indie mores and pop mores for the acts to be able to do it without stepping, intentionally or not, right on some sort of mine. Unfortunately dud. The acts need to get it out of their systems in their teenage pop-punk band days, if at all possible. And if they're going to try it after that, I for one would like to see them really try it, awful and embarrassing as that would be in most cases.

Is Tico Tico who I think it is?

nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:08 (twenty-one years ago) link

I guess it's just that one approach makes me laugh (and it's not good, it's just fun!) and the other annoys me, so I guess I prefer DJ Sammy

Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:09 (twenty-one years ago) link

NB I don't think DJ Sammy is "rescuing" songs at all, just updating them. The jet-fuel AOR grandeur of those tracks is completely wiped off by age and stylistic change, leaving most of us with no ability to even tell there was any jet-fuel grandeur there in the first place: all DJ Sammy does is load them up with the modern trance equivalent. He retrofits the songs to be exactly what they were in the first place.

nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:10 (twenty-one years ago) link

I'm completely dumbfounded by Ally's Beck-hate. WTF!?!

nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

Teenage pop-punk covers are a bit of an exception here, they're almost always enjoyable.

Nabisco - yes, almost certainly! There's a sensible reason for the identity-switch though.

Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:13 (twenty-one years ago) link

I think the crucial thing with Sammy is also that he seems to give these olds tired records a new lease of life and that's what's "good" about him (although I just can't quite yet get my head around actually saying that he's good!), whereas the other covers just knock the sparkle out of the songs in question...

Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

Hm...yes, I now see why Tico Tico is saying what he does in a new guise, bless 'im. :-)

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:27 (twenty-one years ago) link

I love Built To Spill's cover of "I Try", because I really love the song and sing it all the time, but my voice is closer to Doug Martsch's than it is to Macy Gray's.

alex in montreal, Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:28 (twenty-one years ago) link

Why is my Beck-hate confounding? Did you expect me to be a Beck fan? Is there something about me that screams "I LOVE BECK"?

Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:40 (twenty-one years ago) link

YES. No I dunno, he just seems so adorably unhateable, and I love Beck, and I love you, and ARGH THE CONFLICT IN MY MIND IS TOO MUCH!

nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:41 (twenty-one years ago) link

I can pretend to like Beck if it makes you feel better?

Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:43 (twenty-one years ago) link

I don't hate Beck, but I seriously cannot understand why he is so fawned over.

Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

"Just to address the initial post before I get caught up, in what Bizarro universe are the Vines, Coldplay and Beck defined as "indie"?"

In the insistent-on-pigeonholing media-driven musical world in which we live. I could have used the loathesome word "alternative" instead so count yourself lucky.

Apparently, Beck compared the opening hook to "Cry Me A River" to operatic horror, Phantom Of The Opera-style music. I take this as pisstaking.

Nick H, Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

>>This dates back at least to Age of Chance's "Kiss" in the mid 80's
There was a brief fad following this - PigBros (IIRC) did Word U<<

Not gonna read this whole thread (look -- indie people are allowed to use songs by black artists just like the stones and zep and dylan amd elvis did; they don't have to be "respectful", they just have to not suck, which not-sucking is of course rare -- "irony" is nothing at all new, and nothing that indie-rockers invented, and nothing bad in and of itself, and nothing black artists for crissakes don't partake in across and amidst the racial spectrum as well). And I noticed that somebody mentioned "Hollywood Swinging" by the Big Boys. But I just wanted to throw Robert Wyatt's version of Chic's "At Last I Am Free" and James Chance's version of "Don't STop Till You GEt Enough," both of which predated either Age of Chance OR the Big Boys, in there. Ok.

chuck, Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yeah, but Beck is right. Perhaps this is the conundrum of Beck, he doesn't realize his pisstake is actually not pisstake at all?

Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 16:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

And oh yeah, Magazine covered Sly Stone, and Elvis Costello covered Van McCoy (I think it was), and Rick Rubin's band Hose (!) covered Rick James and I think Hot Chocolate, and Alan Vega covered Hot Chocolate. Etc.

chuck, Tuesday, 29 April 2003 17:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

On a side note, the only "antithesis" of the cover title I can actually think of is that R&B singer who did a cover of "Last Nite" by the Strokes, and her name escapes me for the minute. It was shit, anyway.

Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 17:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

damn it why is it that when ppl switch their identities I can never guess who it is, this driveth me nuts

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 17:16 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's simon trife.

Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 17:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

two more classics: shudder to think - "so in to you", 100 flowers - "dizzy miss lizzy"

dan (dan), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 17:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

I liked the Flaming Lips cover a lot, and found it very funny. There has never been a good ironic punk cover, and indie irony is just as bad.

I REALLY seriously doubt Beck's cover of Justin is mean spirited at all. Of any "alternative" act I've seen interviewed, he seems to be the one that generally likes mainstream acts the most.

I'd enjoy hearing his too, because the problem with Justin has always been him shoving his dire voice over great beats.

David Allen, Tuesday, 29 April 2003 18:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

i had a dream the other night wherein a low-style act covered a destiny's child song (i forget which, something off of writing's...) and it was wonderful

jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 18:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

Baxendale did a rubbish cover of "Say My Name," basically illustrating the dilemma Nabisco notes above.

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 18:28 (twenty-one years ago) link

does anyone here actually like music?

kissmyfist (kissmyfist), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 18:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

No.

Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 18:57 (twenty-one years ago) link

Do Soft Cell and Dexy's doing n. soul covers fit into this?

Grace Jones did a pretty good version of She's Lost Control.

Ferg (Ferg), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 19:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

Siouxie & The Banshees covering 'Dear Prudence' - example of 'indie' band covering pop song successfully?

stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 19:30 (twenty-one years ago) link

probably doesnt count tho

stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 19:30 (twenty-one years ago) link

Mull Historical Society did a cover of It Takes More on Re:Covered last night that was so glaaaaaaaaaah it made me want to find my copy of Loss and CRUSH IT TO DEATH. This may well have been partly down to Colin McIntyre's excessively smug face, though.

On an earlier edition of Re:Covered, Liberty X covered High And Dry. They were all sat on stools and were all "Oooh, we're well cred, us - IN YOUR FACE MYLEENE - man, we so skill." It was a bit irritating.

William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 19:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

Oh, and Kelis used to do a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit, which I remember all my friends hating.

William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 19:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

best cover ever: eugene chadbourne's "oh yoko"

dan (dan), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 20:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

it wasn't Baxendale, it was Spare Snare, and it wasn't rubbish at all so eat my fuc. Baxendale did "My Chica Latina" or wtf it's called

electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 22:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

Does Jimmy Eat World's version of "Firestarter" count as an indie act doing a cover of a pop/rap/RnB song? Because that is the greatest cover ever. Excepting possibly Oizone's "Love Me For A Reason", which may be supposed to be ironic but is also ace.

Of course, the big question is 'what makes a good cover', and if you think - as I do - that making the song sound completely different is part of the point of modern cover versions (not going into that trend of 1950s/60s covers which were designed to sound as much like the original as possible so people would buy them thinking they were the original), it's impossible to say that all rock covers of pop songs are dud. Because, you know, at least they're taking the song out of context, and trying something new with it. Even if they are twats who can't like non-credible songs without the disclaimer of irony.

cis (cis), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 22:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

Surely something that makes a good cover is if you can't imagine what it might sound like beforehand. Which obviously isn't true when the Flaming Lips 'tackle' Kylie, say.

Though I like skatepunk covers* because they've become their own little genre, it's accepted practise so the gimmick factor has faded. Whereas indie-band-covers-pop songs is in that infuriating phase between genuine novelty and time-honoured custom.

*not to listen to, in truth.

Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 22:30 (twenty-one years ago) link

OK, I've checked the story, Beck actually described "Cry Me A River" as "haunted house music". Is this an insult?

Nick H, Tuesday, 29 April 2003 23:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

The house is haunted with the echo of Justin on TVeeeee....

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 23:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

If I was feeling snarky I'd suggest that said indie bands were trying to kid themselves that they actually mattered, but I'm not.

B.Rad (Brad), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 23:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

no band matters any more than the next, and fans of any given band are kidding themselves if they think otherwise.

electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 29 April 2003 23:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

Dani Siciliano has done a gorgeous cover of Come As You are, just fyi - has virtually nothing to do with this thread but it's lovely

Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 10:14 (twenty-one years ago) link

Maxwell covered a Kate Bush song, it was great.

Nick A. (Nick A.), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 12:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

Maxwell covered a Kate Bush song, it was great.

Didn't he also get his swarthy loverman spooge all over NIN's "Closer"?

Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 12:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

nine months pass...
Revive.

If only for

Hit Me Baby One More Time covered by Gary Jules

OH MY GOD!

Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:22 (twenty years ago) link

I see no reason for indie band to do covers whether the original is good or not. Indie bands are usually fully able to write their own songs, and should stick to that.

Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:35 (twenty years ago) link

What if there own songs are rubbish, though?

Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:39 (twenty years ago) link

Hold on, Matt, and back up a post or two...

What???

Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:42 (twenty years ago) link

My God it's true.

Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:43 (twenty years ago) link

If their own songs are rubbish, then some other and better indie band should have their recording contract instead.

Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:58 (twenty years ago) link

The recent cover of "crazy in love" by Snow Patrol needs discussing! (xpost)

Jole, Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:59 (twenty years ago) link

Tom YOU MUST TRACK THIS DOWN. And bring a CD to the next FAP.

Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:59 (twenty years ago) link

It's like the days when Dom originally posted that were a far more innocent age.

Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 16:01 (twenty years ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.