Sometimes a song is so iconic it’s better, or perhaps safer, to try rethinking it from the ground up, to try to find a new way to find something in it that will separate your cover out from under the shadow of the original.
Stephen Wilson Jr. showed this year that he has a knack for looking at a song differently – his recent cover of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” feels quite distinct from the original. And though the same aesthetic is present on his new cover of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” it still doesn’t prepare us for how radically he reinvents the song on his battered, electrified acoustic guitar.
Dispensing entirely with the famous bassline – which, for many people, is the heart of the song – Wilson instead begins his version with some vaguely Spanish-sounding noodling around the famous melody. Then he plays muted strings while he lets bass notes ring out. As is his wont, he starts to strum aggressively in the chorus and some of the future verses. Slowly some the chords start to sound recognizable but Wilson mostly avoids the vocal melody deceiving us into thinking he has just replaced the original music entirely.
Both his vocal performance and his vigorous performance on guitar have basically nothing in common with the original. The vibe is entirely different but the lyrics are the same and, if you listen closely, you’ll hear snippets of the bassline and the melody. It’s a truly transformational cover that does indeed move out of the giant shadow of the original. Check it out:
