Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
When “Halo” was released as single, in January of 2009, it became a massive worldwide hit for Beyoncé, but was far from the most successful of the her songs, attaining only, for her, a lowly #5 in the US chart. It was elsewhere that it received grater acclaim, with such disparate statistics as a 13x platinum certification from Australia, making it one of the country’s highest, and the most-played song, 2000 – 2010, on Brazilian radio. Not bad, given only one year within which to beat all the others and olders.
Ryan Tedder and Evan Bogart (with some apparent input from the singer) wrote “Halo” to give a personal flavor to the image of Beyoncé away from the spotlight, minus all the media razzmatazz. Not that there wasn’t some controversy; other performers suggested that the arrangement was recycled from songs written earlier, for Kelly Clarkson and Leona Lewis. All the more intriguing is the suggestion that the song’s premise was based on “Shelter,” a 2004 song by Ray LaMontagne, an artist in about as opposite a field as you could find. (See what you think.)
It has attracted a fair amount of attention in Coverland over the years, and there are north of a hundred versions out there. Many do little than retread the boards, but that is only to be expected. No real outliers, sadly, from the nether fringes of musical tastes: no Tuvan throat singing, no Celtic punk, and nothing remotely Bardcore. Of course there are some stinkers, with some Norwegian black metal from Leo Moracchioli gaining the coveted overall prize for the absolute nadir. So, bypassing those, let’s go for the zeniths.
Joshua Ray Walker – Halo (Beyoncé cover)
I have always perceived the link between R&B and C&W to be that they are one and the same, bar the instrumentation. Whilst the former relies on brass and bass to carry the tune, the latter gives that responsibility to banjos, steel and fiddles. I have to say that “Halo” stretches that concept perhaps as close to straining point as you can get, but bear with me. Would it be a mischief to suggest that this is where Beyoncé took and ran with the whole idea and ethos for Cowboy Carter? Palpable nonsense, I would suggest, but it is a neat idea, even if, I’m sure, Joshua Ray Walker takes no credit for coming up with it when he did his cover. Be that as it may, he gives the song a jolly bounce, the bluegrass stylings running amok beneath his smooth baritone. Even as he lurches into yodel at the end of many of the lines, it never quite marries, marred by the recorded in a field elsewhere backing vocals. Of course, I love it nonetheless, it being catnip for my perverse affectations.
Walker is an unlikely looking dude to be a singing cowboy, if I am allowed to say that, but he sure as hell can whup some ass into his covers, which he knocks out as effortlessly as his own songs. We have featured him before, as he attained a #11 in our Best Of Cher covers, with surely coincidence defining why he might choose two such divas to cover.
The Kingdom Choir – Halo (Beyoncé cover)
Too obvious? Possibly, and likely to further feed the old aphorism about all good soul singers starting in church. But, Beyoncé was a member of the choir at St. John’s United Methodist Church, as a teen and pre-Destiny’s Child, it being where she sang her first solo and where she was a featured soloist for two years, so there. More importantly, I like me a good bit of old fashioned gospel.
The Kingdom Choir are just that bit of good old gospel, even if they hail from in and around London, England. They have been in existence for most of the 2000s, with a couple of albums under their cassocks, 2004’s Smile, It’s A Brand New Day and Stand By Me from 2018. If the first set is of orthodox devotional numbers, the second, from which “Halo” comes, is a more diverse of more broadly spiritual songs. (I am uncertain how much attention, beyond the title, the singers may have paid to the lyric of this one…) The rest of the selection includes songs like Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” and the Isley Brothers’ “Harvest For the World,” though I’m betting that it was the cover by The Christians that they based their choice upon. Irrespective of my mild carping, they provide an elegant backdrop of choral passion and keyboards
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox feat. LaVance Colley – Halo (Beyoncé cover)
Scott Bradlee can be trusted to always come up with something different. His (re)arrangements excel at being clever, if sometimes too clever by half, making his knowing nods at 20th century musical history a little too scholarly and steering the results into a delicate path between parody and pastiche. His “Halo” styles itself as being vintage Motown, which I don’t really buy, at least without looking at the video as I listen. Suddenly it does seem a lot more realized, the trick to remember Bradlee is around musical theater rather than audiophile appreciation. Pop a pair of dark glasses on Colley, a clearly competent crooner, and it could be little Stevie Wonder, bopping away. However, we are here as much to consider the musical performance and, whatever you actually call it, and, without doubt, the brass is tremendous. Bradlee is, I think, the piano player, and is clearly having great fun.
Ane Brun feat. Linnea Ollson – Halo (Beyoncé cover)
The Scandis love to rip up the context of a song and start from scratch, a certain iciness always an integral ingredient to the outcome. Ane Brun is from Norway, and is of Samí extraction, the nomadic tribes who hunt the Tundra. of what used to be referred to as Lapland. She has had a long career in Sweden, singing largely in English, the lingua franca of the Scandinavian countries. With 10 albums to her name, here at Cover Me we have most interest in 2017’s Leave Me Breathless, a covers set that we voted as #3 in our Best Covers Album of that year. She imbues a glacial charm to the lyric of her “Halo,” whilst a string consort pizzicates and then bows behind her, the whole very much in the style of Agnes Obel. It is a lustrous rendition, redolent of a snowstorm in a forest, viewed from a window, a fire crackling in the grate. Linnea Ollson, one of her cellists, is the second and featured voice.
LP – Halo (Beyoncé cover)
As ever, our editor-in-chief Ray Padgett wasn’t wrong when he declared this “Halo” to be “the best ever” as far back as 2012. 13 years late, he wasn’t and still isn’t wrong. So why post it and say it again? My response is that it is so darn good it deserves repeat exposure, actually, again and again and again. I’ll come clean: I wasn’t familiar either with the original “Halo” back then, nor indeed with LP, or Laura Pergolizzi, as their initials stand for, until relatively recently. Confirming Ray’s opinion, they are a powerhouse singer, with a set of pipes that could power the national grid. With a welter of their recordings available, on disc and online, the search should always be set toward live performance, the studio always having a curiously diminishing effect of the power at their command. There isn’t a studio version of this song, the exuberance of the live performance spilling over to the evident joy of at least one fella in the crowd. The song is ripped open, pulled apart and thrown all back together in a way that leaves any viewer, or listener, breathless.
Cover versions apart, Pergolizzi is no mean songwriter, having initially started off mainly as a writer for hire, for artists such as Christine Aguilera and Rihanna. If you haven’t caught any of their seven albums, eight if you include live, it would be remiss not to point you towards their vocals on Morrissey’s version of Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over,” so good they reprised it solo.
