COCKTAILS WITH TERRY

Luke’s version really adds only a country accent and slide steel guitar, bringing no real added dimension or musical insight to the song, although it has been suggested that his maintaining the female gender of the protagonist is “brave” amidst current tensions surrounding gender and pronouns.

Jonas Blue with Dakota and Tobtok with Rivers recorded club-style covered “Fast Car” in the midteens, and like Luke speaking to a country audience expressing conventional lyrical concerns of the desperation of small-town existence without an avenue of escape, these covers may speak to an EDM audience in a similar way, but more celebratory fashion, that the original may not.

In Luke, Jonas Blue, and Tobtok’s defence, it is hard to imagine anyone improving upon a recording that so successfully combines composition, performance, and production as Tracy’s and producer David Kershembaum’s original recording of “Fast Car.” But all their covers do two things, in providing a cross-over moment that may allow them to broaden their respective audiences and simply bring this astounding song to the attention of a new generation. This latter role seems more frequently these days to be the purview of movies and television series that trade in nostalgia of a recent vintage. The best example being Kate Bush “Running Up That Hill” phenomenon of last summer, in that both songs, Kate’s and Tracey’s, have proven durable enough to transcend their time periods, introduce themselves to unfamiliar young listeners, and reintroduce themselves to older listeners who had been missing their respective powers.

On the flip side is the convention in the recording industry of the 1950’s, coinciding with the rise of teenage culture and buying power, of covers being recorded and released nearly simultaneously with the original to effectively increase broader market penetration. Troublingly, this all too often falls into the arena of cultural appropriation, with white artists recording pale, pun intended, versions of music originally recorded by artists of colour, done in part to make the recordings more palpable to a “particular” audience to increase sales.

This usually meant recordings of what would have been called “race” records by “boy or girl next door “ white artists such as the incredibly popular in his day Pat Boone (who would attempt to recharge his career and nice guy image in 1997 by recording an album of hard rock and heavy metal standards In a “Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy” in 1997, forty years after the height of his fame).

Recently, Wes Anderson’s latest movie features the sweet Chas McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey UK cover of Freight Train written by Elizabeth Cotton when she was 11 or 12, inspired by the train that stopped in Carrboro, North Carolina, which she could watch and hear from her home, and originally recorded by The Seegers, with a US cover version done by the

Michael Stewart Quartet in the US, all in 1957.

Cracking this mould most famously would be Elvis Presley with his version of “Hound Dog,” and while he did present a more dangerous public persona that might corrupt the youth of the day, including hips not fit for the television cameras, his somewhat up-tempo, “slap-happy” cover of Big Mama Thornton’s tune does not really capture the slow burn rage and frustration of her bluesy original.

Similarly, The Beatles, probably the most covered artists in history (with “Yesterday” alone being at the top of most recorded songs of all time), began their career covering rhythm and blues recordings in live shows and most notably with “Twist and Shout,” the closing song of their 1963 debut studio album “Please, Please Me.” “Twist and Shout” was originally recorded by the Top Notes, but it did not become a hit in the record charts until it was reworked by The Isley Brothers in 1962, with even greater chart success with The Beatles’ version featuring John Lennon’s ferocious vocals.

And speaking of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones first hit was

“I Wanna Be Your Man,” a Beatles penned tune, and like The Beatles, The Sones started out, and continued throughout their career, covering US rhythm and blues records.

The Talking Heads are another good example of a band inspiring covers that seem never to fail to get everyone up and dancing, including the king of Sweden at the close of the most recent Polar Prize concert where “Once in a Lifetime” was performed by Joshua Idehen, honouring award recipient Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, as well as Anjelique Kidjo, who did her own cover of the song in 2012, and who was dancing with the king.

Shawn Colvin transformed “Naïve Melody” into a remake that never fails to move me. In an interview Shawn described the process of its creation: “When I saw the Talking Heads film, “Stop Making Sense”, I was bowled over. I wanted to cover something of theirs but was stumped. I knew “Psycho Killer” wouldn’t fly. “Naive Melody” was a love song, but maybe too cute. Hmmmm…. I decided to take a close look at the lyrics just for the hell of it. Well! Talk about depth! The coolest, sweetest love song I’d ever heard. I decided to try it. I slowed it down (as I tend to do). It turned into a kind of lullaby. I just call it “Home”, and it fills me up every time I sing it. Who knew?” Home was included in an extraordinary album of covers, called “Cover Girl,” in which Shawn pulls similar subtle nuances from each of the songs she covers that simply do not exist in the original recordings, whether by the Police, Tom Waits, or The Talking Heads.

And this brings up the topic of cover albums, which can fall into several categories, such as a single artist covering a variety of songs from a variety of artists,