I thought today would be a good day to talk about a few of my favorite covers. Covers, like live recordings, are usually a tough sell for me because I get very attached to the original version and any deviation seems bad.
However, on rare occasions, a band will re-invent a song that I like, or (even more amazingly) put together a fantastic version of a song I don’t even like (seeing Ben Gibbard and Carissa’s Wierd doing “Complicated” was a great example of that). This is a post to celebrate those songs. I’ll choose a couple where I think the new version significantly improves on the original.
Everyday – Rogue Wave (Buddy Holly cover)
I haven’t really gotten into Rogue Wave all that much, though a number of folks have strongly recommended them to me. It’s not that I dislike what I’ve heard; it just hasn’t gripped me. After hearing this cover of one of my favorite Buddy Holly songs, though, I may have to give them a more attentive listen. They’ve taken a very pretty, peppy sing-a-long song that can’t help but make you smile and deepened it, fleshed it out.
The feeling and theme of the song remains the same, but the layered guitars add levels, give the song more weight. Instead of a single current, this version feels more like a stream full of eddies, rapids, twists, and turns. The drums come and go, as do the strings. A quick-paced pretty song has been transformed into a slower, more driven, melancholic, and powerful song that is taut with emotion.
The original is great, but this version is even better.
Reason to Believe – Aimee Mann and Michael Penn (Bruce Springsteen cover)
I love Bruce Springsteen, and it’s tough to imagine a cover being better than one of his originals. That is because so much of what makes his music great is his delivery, the way he constructs and executes his songs, whether solo or with the E Street Band. This song, the final cut off his acoustic album Nebraska, is one of the few exceptions, which is a shame as it has some of his very best lyrics. However, his vocals feel a little flat, too matter-of-fact, and are a little off-beat with the guitar. Beyond that, the musical accompaniment has very little variation: the same quietly strummed guitar riff carries through the whole song, occasionally the harmonica kicks in, and other assorted background noise filters in. I love his decision to simply go with the basic recordings for Nebraska, but this is one song that could have used a little touching up.
Fortunately, Aimee Mann and Michael Penn (a husband and wife team who each have a number of great albums on their own) were up to the task. Their version gives the lyrics the groundwork they deserve. The production values are higher, but it is not overproduced. It opens with Penn singing, not much different than the original, but as the first verse ends, the organ kicks in, providing a great harmony. Then, the third (and essential) component of the harmony enters in as Mann joins in singing. The boy/girl interaction works to perfection here – emphasizing the beauty of two elements joining together. This calls attention to the lyrics, which deal with the dreams of finding harmony and the pain that we feel at the realization that this harmony is ephemeral at best.
To explain what I mean, I will take a rather long tangent about The Boss and his songs at this point. A lot of people, I think, misunderstand Springsteen, thinking he is overly simplistic in his glorification of the misfits. This is a reasonable take, as some of his most famous songs tend to strongly suggest that redemption is little more than a car-ride away. However, even “Thunder Road” or “Born to Run” have a lot more realistic view of suffering than one might think.
Lines like “Together Wendy we’ll live with the sadness / I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul” suggest that, even back at the height of the “Born to Run” phenomenon, he was very aware that the redemption promised in these songs was temporary at best. You dreamed crazy dreams, you loved like crazy, you drove away into the night, you pulled out of the town full of losers because to not do so would be to succumb to the weariness. But Bruce knew that the youthful abandon would not be enough. I do not get the impression that a life of perfect happiness awaits around the corner for him and Mary. Instead, they will find pain and sadness, but in the face of that pain, the best they can hope to do is to refuse to give up.
This is not a particularly optimistic view on the world. And on his next few albums, he would write many other songs about broken lives, faded loves, what happens to people once they realize that their youthful dreams are long gone, but nothing is there to replace them. Anyone who could follow up “Born to Run” with songs like “The River” where he declares that:
I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse?
is clearly not someone who believes that true love can conquer all. Instead, it is an artist who is constantly attempting to navigate the space between optimism which is necessary to sustain life, and a realistic portrayal of the lives as people are forced to live them, with all the tedium, and crushing sadness that implies. Springsteen wants us to find heroes in the downtrodden without masking over their suffering. True love may not be able to conquer all, but it is what sustains us, and the capacity for love is what makes everything else worse struggling for.
One of the reasons I love “Reason to Believe” so much is that it addresses this tension better than almost any other song:
Now Mary Lou loved Johnny with a love mean and true
She said “Baby I’ll work for you every day and bring my money home to you”
One day he up and left her and ever since that
She waits down at the end of that dirt road for young Johnny to come back
Struck me kinda funny, seemed kind of funny sir to me
How at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe
For me, the ambiguity in the final line (which ends each of the four verses) is what makes this song special. It could be read either positively or negatively. In one sense, it could be heard with a sense of wonderment: that in spite of the pain of lost love and lost dreams, people persevere and find reasons to believe. In this sense, the song becomes a testament to the strength of people to never give up, to never succumb to the sadness. It tells us that there is honor in living our lives.
However, the line could be read in the opposite way as well. It can be seen as Bruce musing at the irony that people continue to set themselves up for pain by believing against all odds that things will simply turn around. Mary Lou waits for Johnny to return, she hangs onto that belief to keep herself from falling to pieces, but it is not at all hard to see this as a form of psychosis. This reading of the song treats the four short vignettes as dark comedies. Bruce, as the detached singer, is filled with amazement that people continue to find reasons to believe, only to have their dreams continually broken.
Ultimately, I prefer the first interpretation, but I think that becomes much stronger when placed in the context of the second. We do need to find reasons to believe, and there is always hope, even in the worst of situations, but even as we strive to find meaning for our lives, we cannot lose sight of the fact that so many people are faced with overwhelming sadness. And we can’t let our dreams become a substitute for actually living our not-so-perfect lives.
As I said earlier, this is why I find the cover to be so perfect. The harmony created by the two singers gets at the heart of the song in a way that Bruce, by himself, simply cannot. The connection, the perfect interlinking of voices, is the ideal for which we strive. When the song is simply Bruce by himself, it feels like a simple song about a few people. With Mann and Penn together, it still feels incredibly personal, but it also hints at a broader allegory that applies to all of us.