Dec 022022
 
The Goudies

Back in college, I was in our local bar for “Acoustic Tuesday” and a guy came up on stage and played “Baby One More Time” on an acoustic guitar, as seriously as possible. I loved it but everyone around me rolled their eyes and there were even a few boos. Maybe some had heard something like this before. Maybe it seemed to obvious, to easy, or just too gimmicky.

That’s the danger with the serious acoustic guitar (or piano) cover of the goofy song everyone knows: people will likely dismiss it as a gimmick. YouTube has popularized this form in the decades since I was in college, but I still think there are plenty of people who just don’t like the idea and think these types of covers are cheap.

So there is danger is covering Will Smith’s theme song to ‘90s classic sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with an acoustic guitar, entirely seriously. But The Goudies are up to it, particularly since they treat it like a classic folk dirge along the lines of “Long Black Veil.”

Sam Goudie’s voice is plaintive and a little old timey. Beth Goudie’s voice is ethereal in that classic folk sense. They sing the lyrics, so there’s a new vocal melody and the phrasing is almost entirely different. In this version, the lyrics convey a loss; leaving one place and becoming “king” somewhere else doesn’t sound so great. Their guitars evoke a classic folk ballad, even when there’s the solo (which is very modest).

Nov 302022
 
best cover songs of november 2022
Bob Dylan – I Can’t Seem to Say Goodbye (Jerry Lee Lewis cover)

Bob Dylan doesn’t change his setlists much anymore. In fact, on his recent UK and European tour, he played the exact same setlist every single night…except one. The day it was announced Jerry Lee Lewis passed away, Dylan returned to the stage after his usual finale “Every Grain of Sand.” As anyone who’s read his new book knows, Bob knows his music history. So he skipped the obvious picks and tackled the quite obscure Sun Records-era outtake “I Can’t Seem to Say Goodbye.” Continue reading »

Nov 162018
 

“Covering the Hits” looks at covers of a randomly-selected #1 hit from the past sixty years.

gettin jiggy wit it covers

Will Smith’s 1998 number-one hit “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” would have been perfect for our current era of YouTube covers.

First and foremost, the song was massive. It topped the charts for three weeks and won Smith his second-consecutive Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. But more specifically, the simple novelty number boasts an instantly-identifiable hook (“Na na na na na na na…”) that would remain recognizable transposed into any genre. Google searches of “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It metal” and “”Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It bluegrass” would likely turn up a dozen options apiece.

But “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” came out in 1997, eight years before YouTube’s founding. Though a massive, inescapable hit – if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t fit this feature – almost no one covered it. We’ll get to the few who did below, but what strikes me most is how this dearth of “Jiggy” covers opens an interesting window into how drastically YouTube has changed the cover-song landscape. Continue reading »

Aug 132012
 

Taking 90s hip hop songs and doing a current indie cover of it has become a bit of a worn out novelty, especially the acoustic take. Luckily, Chicago indie rockers Fort Frances go beyond the expected with their latest in a series of covers. Over the last six months we have seen them release great covers of Beck’s “Guess I’m Doing Fine” and Paul Simon’s “The Only Living Boy in New York.” Now the band has re-invented a classic summer party song. Continue reading »

Jul 222011
 

While some cover artists re-interpret known songs, Alyson Greenfield is one who goes for full on re-inventions. Her new EP of glockenspiel and piano-centric hip hop covers, entitled Rock Out with Your Glockenspiel Out, offers exercises in juxtaposition that work on many levels. Not only is she using an instrument straight out of third grade music class to play songs with adult lyrical themes, but her shimmering, simple sound and inflected vocals oppose almost every convention of hip-hop. This version of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” shows her angle, putting such an unexpected twist on an otherwise fairly conventional track that it even transcends appeals to novelty. Continue reading »

Jun 242011
 

This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.

A somewhat mellower set today, perfect for the official start of summer. The first few tracks take us into folk and folk-rock, but things get a bit dreamier at the end on covers of David Byrne/Brian Eno and, of all people, Will Smith. Party in the city when the heat is on! Continue reading »