Ten Songs I'd Still Like To Cover

Wednesday is about books and reading, Sometimes it's just some of my writing. Today, a list of songs I'd like to cover...I know music is on Friday, but I think this is more about 'writing'...

Patsy Cline, Back In Baby’s Arms 
The Velvet Underground, New Age 
Tom Waits, Hold On 
Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), I See A Darkness 
The Rolling Stones, Salt Of The Earth 
Sinead O’Connor, The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance 
Cyndi Lauper, All Through The Night 
The Beatles, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) 
Elvis Costello, I Want You
Fleetwood Mac, The Green Manalishi 

I wrote this list 15 years ago. On this day, July 31, back in 2009. Back then I was a daily music blogger — and I pumped out the material every single day. These days I have other jobs and responsibilities, and I don’t want to write about music all the time, either. But still, music is all around me — and my life is (usually) the better for that. And sometimes I can’t help myself but to write about music. I’m also still looking for new ways to write about music…

One thing that is interesting, when you blog your life, is how you have a whole lot of back pages. Notes. Drafts. Posts. Ideas. Sometimes the full context is missing, but the nugget of an idea remains. Sometimes you have the whole post, or enough of the gist of it. With this set of songs, I was likely doing a generic ‘list’ topic, a staple of those blogging days, particularly early on in the establishment of my Blog On The Tracks. I’d make a list, or the start of one, and ask the readers at home to carry it on, or supply their own. Or both…

Anyway, looking at this list — songs I wanted to cover in a mythical covers band — I’m still taken with the selections. At least for the most part. I could add one hundred others of course. I could probably remove one or two of these in favour for songs that have become firm favourites since 2009, including a few tunes I’d never even heard at the point when I scribbled out this set of ideas on a scrap of paper.

But also there are songs that are magical and yet you wouldn’t want to cover them — the magic is in that actual recording.

So far my song of 2024 is Do It Again by The Beach Boys. Actually a song from 1969, but like that matters. I’ve loved this forever, but this year it’s taken over part of my brain. I sometimes listen to this slight tune ten times in a row. And though I could have a go at pointing out the the ‘writing’ is clever — both a parody of the ingredients of early Beach Boys songs and a sophisticated and cynical return to the format (for $$$). But, yeah, look, basically I don’t love this song for the writing, and I don’t want to hear any covers of it at all. I love this song for the arrangement, and the recording. It is perfect as it is.

Other songs you want to cover, or hear covers of, because you feel they could be different in someone else’s hands, with someone else’s voice. And you are celebrating the writing of it — as something that holds up. From my list, Cyndi Lauper’s All Through The Night actually is a cover.

Jules Shear wrote the song and released it in 1983, on his debut. Lauper rushed out her version the same year on her debut. She also included a cover of Prince’s When You Were Mine (from a couple of years earlier) on that same album. She nailed that too. She doesn’t do anything hugely different to All Through The Night, just makes it more anthemic. And it’s not even that it’s the superior take (though it is), it’s simply the song I grew up with, from an album I loved — and still love. And I think a busted-ass version of it, in the way that Warren Zevon dismantled and barely patched back together Steve Winwood’s Back In The High Life Again could really work.

Other songs on that list have already been covered — and somewhat nailed in their ‘new’ version too. The Green Manalishi by Fleetwood Mac (when Peter Green was still at the helm) is a psychedelic blues classic. A weird, ethereal thing that fills me with a wonderful version of the jitters every time I hear it. But I also really love where the Melvins took it — so much so, they very much became one of my favourite bands as a result (and they still are today):

I don’t listen to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy much these days, nor any of the aliases or projects released by Will Oldham. And not because I don’t like him, or his work. There’s just so much of it, and I was in deep for a while — now I’m not. But I do love this song. It’s been covered a lot, including by Oldham. He first released it as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, but later re-recorded a version under his own (actual) name too. And they’re both good, and very similar, and loads of other people have covered it — including the late great Johnny Cash. But I never heard it better than the night I saw Oldham sing it live (well there was a couple of times I saw him, but one in particular). And actually, his first recorded version is pretty amazing too:

I’ve always loved New Age by The Velvet Underground, because it feels like a different type of writing from Reed. I love everything the band ever did, and there are a dozen covers of almost any tune by them, and then more in piles after that — and I largely don’t care for any covers of the songs over the originals, but that wouldn’t stop me from wanting to pay tribute; from wanting to try to get deep inside the simplicity of this lovely song.

Same goes with Elvis Costello’s I Want You — though again, there’s already a definitive cover of that I think, via this guest-appearance/duet:

Anyway, look, it’s just fun to think about songs for the writing, and wonder if it’s really the writing or the recording that makes them; another way of thinking about this is whether it’s ‘the song’ (ie: The Writing) or ‘the record’ (that being the single or the album track; the recorded version). Some songs are amazing songs, amazing pieces of writing. Some songs are just really great records. I don’t think Tally Ho by The Clean is necessarily a great piece of writing. But goddamn it’s a beautiful record. It’s basically New Zealand’s answer to The Velvet Underground:

(And so are The Clean in so many ways). Maybe I’d have fun covering this — sure — but it’s not on the list, because there’s nothing remarkable to me about what’s being said here.

But I do think Pink Frost by The Chills is both an amazing song or piece of writing, and a great record — so I would not want to touch that. And nor should anyone else. We should let that stand now in tribute to Martin (R.I.P.)

Anyway, the ten songs I first chose 15 years ago for a short piece of writing, far shorter than this, still stand for me. They’re all special songs to my ears, and could maybe stand to gain something from an honest attempt at decent cover. The Beatles’ I Want You is not a great piece of songwriting really — but it’s a mood. And it was on the list, I reckon, for structure. The idea of seamlessly moving between covers of their song I Want You (She’s So Heavy) and Costello’s darker, broody, nasty classic, I Want You would have been something I’d have been very into (still am in theory — and this is all still very much in theory).

Anyway, here’s the songs in a playlist.

And I’d love to know what ten songs you’d cover — or would want to hear covered by a great band. List them, or as many as you can be bothered, in the comments below by all means.