Feb 182022
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Hey Ya covers

Outkast has been hugely influential in the rap genre, and the duo has been innovating since their first album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was released in 1994. Big Boi and André 3000  began to crossover to pop with songs like “Ms. Jackson,” but the Speakerboxxx/The Love Below album quickly became the duo’s biggest commercial success. In this double album, Speakerboxxx represented Big Boi’s vision while The Love Below represented André 3000’s. The first two singles promoted one song of each: “The Way You Move” (which definitely deserves its own Cover Me post at some point) and “Hey Ya!”. Both became instant dance-floor classics.

“Hey Ya!” really has it all. A call-and-response, a coined dance move, and references to Beyoncé and Lucy Liu. Is it a happy song? Is it a sad song? Do we really care? The song topped FiveThirtyEight’s data-driven ultimate wedding playlist, and this checks out. I have personally been the one shaking it like a Polaroid picture on the wedding reception dance floor and wow, do I want to be doing that again. With the backlog of weddings postponed because of the pandemic, will 2022 finally see the resurgence of this essential rite of passage for a newly married couple? Time will tell. Until then let’s hear some others reimagine “Hey Ya!”

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May 112020
 

Cover Two reviewJoan Wasser started out as a violinist, performing in a variety of bands throughout the ’90s including The Dambuilders, Black Beatle, and Antony and the Johnsons. She eventually broke out on her own, assuming the stage name Joan As Police Woman (inspired by the TV show Police Woman) and releasing her first solo album in 2006. After two solo records of original material, Joan As Police Woman released a limited edition covers album in 2009 that included a variety of songs, from T.I. to David Bowie. Four albums and over a decade later, Joan is back with Cover Two, a similarly eclectic batch of cover songs.

Joan As Police Woman describes the process of creating this album: “I start with the question, ‘WHY, exactly, do I love this song?’ I take those elements and reform them, sometimes removing much of the remaining material to refocus them through new glasses.” Her process is evident in the sound of the album. Her covers are sparse, but still evocative.

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Aug 082019
 
david byrne cover songs

Talking Heads only ever recorded one cover, and when I talked to David Byrne about it for my book, he seemed to have mixed feelings on the subject. “There’s always a little bit of resistance to recording a cover like that because it’s kind of a crowd pleaser,” he told me. “I’d seen it happen before, where radio DJs who pick what they’re going to play will often pick a cover song… So then a band gets known for covering somebody else’s song as opposed to writing their own material. They have to go through a struggle for years to get identified with their own songs.”

Talking Heads recorded “Take Me to the River,” it became their biggest hit up to that point, and Byrne said: That’s it. No more covers. The band never followed it up with a second.

He’s relaxed the rules a bit more in his solo career, most recently covering Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout” on tour (he says he’s bringing the cover to Broadway, too). And clearly he’s been listening to covers. For his DB Radio show on his website, he just compiled a wonderfully eclectic mix of his favorite covers. The theme, he says, is artists doing the unexpected, from Sonic Youth covering The Carpenters to Miley Cyrus covering Nine Inch Nails. And when the song choice itself may not be surprising – Patti Smith covering the Rolling Stones, say – the arrangements are. Here’s what he wrote on his website: Continue reading »

Jul 222019
 

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

OutKast played a major role in putting hip-hop from the South on the map. The duo, made up of ATLiens André “André 3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, have won numerous awards, including multiple American Music Awards and Grammys. Before Speakerboxxx/The Love Below brought us “Hey Ya!,” Stankonia brought us “Ms. Jackson.” OutKast’s first single from Stankonia was “B.O.B.”, which didn’t get as much attention as anticipated due to its controversial subject matter. “Ms. Jackson” was the second single, and that was the one that propelled the album, winning the Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. 

The idea for the song came from Benjamin’s experience with Erykah Badu (his baby’s mama) and her mother (his baby mama’s mama). Although the song is upbeat, with a catchy chorus and fast rap lines, it tells a rather sad story, not unlike the later “Hey Ya!”

In my search for the top “Ms. Jackson” covers, I looked for a particular trifecta:

  1. a strong start with “this one right here goes out to all the baby’s mamas’, mamas,”
  2. a powerful stress on the “ooh”s after “I’m sorry Ms. Jackson,” and
  3. the delivery of the crucial line: “forever, forever, ever, forever, ever?”

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Mar 052014
 

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question comes from Cover Me staffer Mike Misch: What cover song shouldn’t work as well as it does?
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May 062013
 

There are a few go-to songs that everyone (save the diehard fan) associates with OutKast – fewer still are the songs that make the oft-covered list. All of which makes it that much more of a pleasure to see Tame Impala covering “Prototype,” off of André 3000‘s half of 2003’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below. Continue reading »