Johnny Cash’s “Hurt“. Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love“. Jimi Hendrix‘ “All Along The Watchtower“. But also Travis‘ “Baby One More Time“. Type-O-Negative’s “Cinnamon Girl“. Clem Snide’s ”Beautiful” Or even worse, The Calling’s ”London Calling”. U2’s ”Fortunate Son”. Limp Bizkit’s ”Faith”. Yes, I know that you know – all of these are cover versions. Of course you, as the title to this special already implies. Today we want to have a look at cover versions and what makes them good or when do they turn sour? There is also a cause for us to do so, the release of a really great EP by some friends of ours. Årabrot from Scandinavia, whose Heart-EP is out today. We have a lot of goodies, so just move along and enjoy!
When we heard about Kjetil and Karin doing an EP full of cover versions it manifested right before our eyes - ’We gotta do a bit more than just a review, we gotta dissect the art of cover versions!’ Well, of course the ONE question always connected to cover versions is a simple and simultaneously most difficult one – what is a good cover version? Must it be a complete homage not changing too much, like Peter Gabriel did it with The Magnetic Fields’ classic ”The Book Of Love” or the Faith No More cover of ”Easy” (which only differs in that remarkable ”uuurrghhhhhhhnnn” moaner Patton gives at 1:54)? If covering artists want to show their respect for a song which, in their opinion, is perfect – then this way is the way. Listen to Nirvana’s version of the Bowie-classic ”The Man who Sold the World” and you can hear that the only thing they changed is the tuning more or less. Nevertheless, the track gains a completely unknown quality when performed by Kurt Cobain who at that point already had suicidal tendencies. And to make it clear, even if a band like In Flames covers Genesis’ ”Land of Confusion” there is not that much of a change, in my opinion, only because they riff it out much harder, speed it up one notch and switch the vocals into Melo-Death-mode. It’s basically the same structure just in a different notion. A good cover, even if it is not a real change to the song; however, converting a song’s genre is not always easy, because the novelty factor only goes such a long way.