Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
Some songs have an adaptive trait that allows it to survive out in the musical wild. Trends come and go, stylistic sea changes surge and retreat, and tech revolutions rise and fall; they cause other great songs to fall to the wayside, while the truly classic song only gains luster as time goes by. For me, “Time After Time” is one of those songs.
I grumble every year at this time about the wrong artists getting into the Rock Hall of Fame. (What I really mean is that my favorite performer has once again been overlooked.) But this year I’m glad for Cyndi Lauper getting inducted. When you write and record a song like “Time After Time,” a song covered by Willie Nelson, Miles Davis, and over 400 other artists, you are richly deserving of the honor. (It should have happened in 2023, when Lauper was first nominated, but we’ll let that go.)
“Time After Time” (co-written with Rob Hyman) is just one of Lauper’s many achievements. In fact, the song is not even her best-seller–that’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Nor is it the song of hers I like best–that would be “All Through the Night.” But it’s “Time After Time” that looms largest in her catalog, and that’s because it has entered the American Songbook.
Now that’s a true honor. Sales figures and popularity polls don’t get you into the American Songbook. There’s no selection committee involved. A song like “Time After Time” becomes a standard only gradually, after thousands of musicians decide individually it’s a song they want to play. Jazz singers, folk artists, pop stars, rockers, even bluegrass banjo pickers have added the song to their set lists, and to their albums. Pros and semi-pros have played it at countless wedding parties, and amateurs have played it at countless more open mics and karaoke nights.
For a song that was recorded almost as an afterthought (the label insisted the album was one track short), “Time After Time” has done pretty well for itself. It was nominated for, but did not win, the Grammy award for Song of the Year. The winner that year was Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” and that was almost certainly the right call in 1985. But in all the decades since, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” has been covered only 40 times, compared to over 400 covers of “Time After Time.” Songs move through the culture in mysterious ways.
Here are five adaptations of Lauper’s signature song (or one of her signature songs). Each one is worth a second listen as we ponder what makes “Time After Time” impervious to time itself.
Tuck & Patti–“Time After Time” (Cyndi Lauper cover)
Tuck Andress is a virtuoso on guitar, and Patti Cathcart Andress is a singer of enormous gifts and sensitivity. Even on this soft ballad, the jazz duo takes off on flights of improvisational fancy. But the high note of this performance may be the crowd work. Patti invites the audience to sing along on the song’s hypnotic closing refrain, “Time after time.” It takes some persuasion but Patti is nothing if not persuasive. Tuck loops through the closing chord progression, as more voices shyly join the chorus. There’s an art to transforming a crowd into a choir and Patti has mastered it. The call and response that emerges is beautiful and dignified. The repetition doesn’t feel repetitive but like a spellbinding incantation.
Eva Cassidy–“Time After Time” (Cyndi Lauper cover)
Cassidy plays a simple folk guitar with plain chords, and a basic picking pattern with minimal adornment. A modest flourish goes a long way–the quick triplet notes that open the song (and return after each chorus) create an effective hook, at once nothing much and yet all that is necessary to catch you. In her singing, too, Cassidy keeps it simple, avoids drama and attention-grabbing technique. Her attention, and ours, is on the sincerity of feeling. Cassidy is direct rather than decorative, so that when she does slip in a vocal swoop or leap the moment really registers.
Alison Brown–“Time After Time” (Cyndi Lauper cover)
As a thought experiment, say you owned a record store, and that this instrumental by Alison Brown was a new single–where would you shelve it? The banjo obviously suggests bluegrass or old-timey Appalachian music, but Brown’s playing doesn’t slot into either camp. The arrangement has strong jazz elements and a bold willingness to reinvent the song’s structure as she goes. But does that make it jazz? File it under the “Uncategorizable” category, I guess?
Iron and Wine–“Time After Time” (Cyndi Lauper cover)
As much as I love the broody acoustic indie/folk of Iron and Wine, its most captivating qualities don’t always transfer to the covers that Iron and Wine performs. Unlike Gillian Welch, say, who is able to invest her own broody acoustic sound into songs by Radiohead, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, and a few dozen other artists, Iron and Wine struggles to breathe new life into the song they’re covering. But “Time After Time” is one of the exceptions. While it’s a faithful tracing of the original, the guitar’s chord progression quietly resists the flow of the song, creating a subtle undercurrent; the effect evokes the haunting tension at the heart of so many Iron and Wine originals. Meanwhile, Sam Beam’s quiet monotonal voice gently asserts that Cyndi Lauper’s abundant energy and dynamism is not the only way to summon the song’s emotions.
Cassandra Wilson–“Time After Time” (Cyndi Lauper cover)
The great jazz chanteuse Cassandra Wilson does a makeover on “Time After Time” that is in keeping with what she does with U2’s “Love Is Blindness,” and with so many other pop songs. She slows it down, she sweetens it with silence and space, she massages the melody into pleasant new shapes. Best of all, we get to hear Wilson’s stellar supporting cast weave a delicate spell around her, with their sympathetic touches and sonic surprises. If a drum beats out of time, it’s in a good way, a jazz way.
Follow our complete Rock and Roll Hall of Fame series here! All week long we’ll be sharing covers by/of every artist inducted: Cyndi Lauper, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, The White Stripes, Salt n Pepa, Bad Company, Soundgarden, and Warren Zevon!
