Adam Mason, Author at Cover Me

Adam Mason

Adam Mason lives in Warwickshire, England, with his partner and two small daughters. He's written stuff for PopMatters and once wrote a PhD thesis. He edits and proofreads by day (for money) and enjoys films, collecting vinyl, the occasional play by local-boy William Shakespeare, and beer. He also has an autobiographical novel in the works called 'A Life as a Stranger', named after an Ultravox lyric from 1983, and featuring Ultravox quite a bit. It's gonna be big.

One Great Cover: Saint Etienne’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”

Posted by Adam Mason at 12:30 pm 2 Responses »

Aug 112023

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

Saint Etienne Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Prior to Saint Etienne, a bevy of notable names stepped up to cover Neil Young‘s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” with varying degrees of success. Elkie “Pearl’s a Singer” Brooks wrung out the simple—almost childlike—lyrics of the classic 1970 ballad on a moribund disco version of 1978. Stephen Stills rediscovered its 3/4 time and added a self-written verse on a schmaltzy non-hit version of 1984. Psychic TV made an agreeably acid-tinged waltz out of it (yes, one of those) in 1989.

However, it was the UK trio of Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs, and Moira Lambert, going by the name of a French soccer team, who made the song the basis of a massively influential post-house sound in 1990. That’ll be the great cover you’re looking for. And that’ll be the great cover that launched Saint Etienne’s long and remarkable career in samples, beats, and basslines.

But just how an old folk-rock number by a nasal-voiced Canadian hippie made the journey to cutting-edge electronic pop in the days of UK rave is a question worth asking. Continue reading »

Review: The Endless Coloured Ways – The Songs Of Nick Drake

Posted by Adam Mason at 8:00 am 3 Responses »

Jul 072023

When tasked with covering a Nick Drake song, your first thought might very well be, are my finger-picking skills up to scratch? Then you’d likely be anxious that your acoustic guitar isn’t tuned in the strange and unorthodox way it should be, while under pressure to do justice to Drake’s deeply poetic lyrics. You might also be tempted to slur the occasional word for jazzy effect, as you basically try to honor a uniquely melancholy acoustic sound that’s become a sacred thing since the English singer’s death in 1974, aged just 26, from an overdose of antidepressants.

The message behind The Endless Coloured Ways – The Songs Of Nick Drake, however, is this: don’t sweat all that stuff.

The newest Drake tribute album curators are Cally Callomon, Manager of the Nick Drake Estate, and Jeremy Lascelles, co-founder of Blue Raincoat Music, who are both keen to popularize Nick Drake posthumously in major new ways. Indeed, now that the Estate has agreed to a global publishing deal with Blue Raincoat Music Publishing, why wouldn’t they be? Lascelles, therefore, claims to have issued “one simple brief to each of the artists” involved in paying tribute to the musician barely recognized in his lifetime, which was to “ignore the original recording of Nick’s, and reinvent the song in their own unique style.”
Continue reading »

One Great Cover: Los Lobos’ “La Bamba”

Posted by Adam Mason at 10:00 am No Responses »

May 122023

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

Los Lobos‘ version of Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba” could well be the most faithful cover ever. Which could be the key to its greatness. There’s no reimagining going on here. No reinterpreting, reinventing, or re-anything! Nearly 30 years after it was first a hit, the band performed it just like the original artist performed it. Right down to the cowbells.
Continue reading »

Rarely Covered Beatles Songs From The First Year of Beatlemania

Posted by Adam Mason at 11:30 am No Responses »

Mar 102023

Rarely Covered looks at who’s mining the darkest, dustiest corners of iconic catalogs.

So it’s early 1963 and you’re a British pop act in need of a new hit record. Maybe you’ve recorded a Goffin and King number already, and you’ve noted that the Shadows and their guitar instrumentals are on the wane. Maybe you want to tap into the new craze for beat music sweeping the ballrooms, clubs, and town halls of the nation, that melodic hybrid of rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, and skiffle. Or maybe you’re established in a beat group and just want to keep serving up those driving rhythms the best way you can.

So what do you do? Well, you might cover a song by a besuited Liverpool fourpiece enjoying huge chart success and popularity off the back of a distinctive self-penned number called “Please Please Me.” Especially if the guy who manages them, Brian Epstein, also manages you, and/or you’re traveling up and down the country with them on a tour bus. You can keep your hands off “I Saw Her Standing There,” though. That’s promised to someone.

Jump to early 2023, and, assuming you did make a deal with the Liverpool group, you’ve made history as one of the first artists ever to have covered the Beatles. Before “I Want To Hold Your Hand” happened, and before the big guns like Joe Cocker got involved, along with Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and, of course, Alvin and the Chipmunks. The fact is you’ve covered a song that only about 23 other artists have ever covered, as opposed to, say, 573. Plus you did it in the historic initial year of Beatlemania!

One Great Cover: Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ “Mad World”

Posted by Adam Mason at 1:00 pm No Responses »

Dec 092022

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

You break something down to its most basic parts and people just react.–Michael Andrews, 2003

The Californian composer Michael Andrews and his childhood buddy Gary Jules scored the most unlikely UK Christmas #1 in history with their cover of “Mad World” in 2003. Listeners raised a lot more questions than glasses of eggnog. Where were the sleighbells, the snow allusions? Where was the Christian message of peace, à la Cliff Richard? The children’s choir? The cloying sentimentality? The song had none of these things. Instead, it had a stripped-back sound, a quiet mournfulness, and some distinctly unfestive lines laid bare. One was: “Went to school and I was very nervous / No one knew me, no one knew me.” Another was: “The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had.”

In fact, the song was basically about a depressed kid.

It wasn’t just about a depressed kid; it was even more about a depressed kid than the original. And this was likely the key to its greatness and, amazingly, its Yuletide success.
Continue reading »

One Great Cover: Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold the World”

Posted by Adam Mason at 12:00 pm 1 Response »

Oct 072022

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

“I didn’t screw it up, did I?” Kurt Cobain, November 18, 1993

“The Man Who Sold the World” is a David Bowie narrative song concerned with, not the anguish of spaceflight, but the anguish of a fractured personality. Yet few people noticed when it was released in 1970 on the poor-selling album of the same name, as the singer struggled to follow through on the success of his “Space Oddity” hit of 1969. It wasn’t released as a single. And it was soon vastly overshadowed by the mighty glam-rock chart attack that came of Bowie doppelgangers Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane: “Starman,” “John, I’m Only Dancing,” “The Jean Genie.”