Good Better Best Archives

Good, Better, Best: “Gentle on My Mind” (John Hartford/Glen Campbell)

Posted by Tom McDonald at 10:00 am 2 Responses »

Oct 112024

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

In terms of commercial metrics, like the number of plays on US radio, or the number of cover versions released, John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind” is massively popular and always has been since its 1967 debut. And yes, the most successful version of Hartford’s hit is a cover: namely Glen Campbell’s arrangement, which he recorded with the Wrecking Crew in LA within months of Hartford’s original release.

Both Hartford’s version and Campbell’s version earned Grammys (in different categories) in 1968. Every subsequent cover of “Gentle on My Mind”–and there are several hundreds of them–is most likely a take on Campbell’s version. Hartford didn’t seem to have a problem with Campbell stealing his thunder–see this video in which the two artists perform “Gentle on My Mind” together on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour TV show. Both artists revisited the song multiple times through the decades to come; the best of these may be this one, in which Hartford convenes a few bluegrass and country music legends to pick and grin on it.

The song’s chances of success must have seemed thin in 1967 when Hartford first shopped it around. “It violates all the principles of songwriting,” Hartford told an interviewer in 1987. “It’s a banjo tune, it has no chorus. It has a lot of words so that it’s hard to sing.” Indeed, it’s too bare-bones, musically, to amount to much. There’s no chorus, no bridge, no catchy instrumental riff. Second, the song doesn’t slot into any particular genre–it’s not quite bluegrass, country, folk-rock, or pop–it’s all of the above and therefore none of them. Finally, Hartford breaks basic lyric-writing rules (and he breaks them beautifully). His verses are long-winded; his rhyme scheme is offbeat. He crams in janky words and phrases that are difficult to sing. Lines like “I dip my cup of soup back from a gurglin’ cracklin’ cauldron in some train yard” would have most vocalists calling for a rewrite. But this free-spirited prose poem is deeply American in the Walt Whitman/Jack Kerouac tradition, as is fitting for a song of the open road, a song of freedom. The song that shouldn’t work at all works perfectly.

If traveling the backroads and riding the rails and hanging out in hobo camps is the life, why is the song’s narrator always thinking of one special person back home? Who is the person whose door is always open and who is ever in his thoughts? Hartford himself never committed to one definitive interpretation of the song. He admitted that if he had been trying to write a hit song, he would have written it differently.

Hartford also revealed that this quintessentially American song was actually inspired by Doctor Zhivago, the epic Russian novel (and 1965 David Lean film) about the Bolshevik Revolution. And with that, comrades, it’s time to look at three interpretations of this undyingly popular song…
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Good, Better, Best: “Tubthumping” (Chumbawamba)

Posted by Mike Tobyn at 11:00 am 2 Responses »

Aug 182023

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

It can be hard work being in a band for 30 years. Not everyone survives with their friendships and dignity intact. The Anarcho-Punk outfit Chumbawamba originated in the North of England in 1982, and survived as a band until 2012. A marvelous recent documentary showed that they still get on with each other, on the whole. In addition to the precarious living that is common in the early stages (and other) of being a musical combo outside the mainstream, they had principles that restricted their ability to grow and make money. They gave their time and music to a lot of unpaid causes. They encouraged their fans to record their concerts and circulate them as cassettes, even though they didn’t have as many people at their gigs, and buying merchandise, as the Grateful Dead. Each member of their fan club had an entirely individual interpretation of their mission and how to fulfil it, and were vocal with their opinions, and quick to boycott. And yet they thrived.

What does a One Hit Wonder add to that mix? Chumbawamba’s career is neatly divided around 1997: the period before they had one of the biggest singles in the world, and the period after. Having already alienated a section of their fanbase (as usual) by “selling out” by signing with a “Big” label, they then produced an overtly “pop” single, “Tubthumping,” and everything changed. They appeared in media throughout the world and played concerts across the globe. They generated a lot of cash from sales and licensing the hit, which they could direct to their causes if they wanted. They humiliated a bloviating politician in a way that they could not have before. If one of the band encouraged fans, on national television in the US, to steal their record if they cannot afford, what was it? Loose, unthinking talk? A dada-ist prank? Evidence of an excellent eye for PR? All three? Whatever the reason, it did not harm sales.
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Good, Better, Best: “Bird Song” (Grateful Dead)

Posted by Tom McDonald at 11:11 am 2 Responses »

Nov 112022

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

Whatever you think or don’t think of the Grateful Dead, we have to credit the songwriting team of Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter for turning out some indelible classics. As long as there are acoustic guitars to strum and humans to sing, “Ripple” will ring out, and “Friend of the Devil” too. These songs have osmosed into the folk tradition that gave rise to them.

I’m not going to make the same claim of timelessness for “Bird Song,” Garcia and Hunter’s elegy to their friend Janis Joplin. Its greatness is of a different kind. But as far as elegies go, it has very few peers and is worth attention.
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Good, Better, Best: “You’re So Vain” (Carly Simon)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 12:00 pm No Responses »

Oct 312022

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

If a horse could sing in a monotone, the horse would sound like Carly Simon, only a horse wouldn’t rhyme “yacht,” “apricot,” and “gavotte.” – Robert Christgau

It’s definitely not about James [Taylor]… but he had the unfortunate experience of taking a jet up to Nova Scotia after I’d written the song. He was saved by the fact that it wasn’t a Lear. – Carly Simon

Rolling Stone: A musical question. As per legend: “You’re So Vain” — did you think the song was about you?
Warren Beatty: [Laughs, 15-second pause] Who wrote that?

Good, Better, Best: “Love is a Battlefield” (Pat Benatar)

Posted by Tom McDonald at 10:30 am No Responses »

Oct 312022

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

For someone who exuded so much snarl and toughness (“Hit Me with Your Best Shot”), you’d think Pat Benatar’s model was Joan Jett, say, or Suzi Quatro. Actually, it was hearing Liza Minnelli that inspired Benatar to give up her day job and give the music business her best shot. And a pretty impressive shot it was: Benatar enters the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this week.

Her timing was as striking as her voice. The singer’s rise coincided perfectly with the era of MTV. In fact, Benatar’s “You Better Run” was the first video by a solo artist that the channel ever played. True, she was well on her way to fame and fortune with her pre-MTV releases–she was already a radio star, in other words. But Benatar had the physicality, the charisma, and the work ethic to take full advantage of the new format.

We are looking at “Love is a Battlefield,” one of the singer’s best sellers. Unlike “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” her very best seller, Benatar is still willing to sing “Battlefield” today. The song also represents a pivot away from her early hard rock sound towards softer and more atmospheric material. In the ’90s she would shift gears again, to a blues and R’n’B focus.

While Benatar wrote some of her own hits, “Battlefield” wasn’t one of them. Holly Knight and Mike Chapman get the writing credit. Knight wrote another of Benatar’s hits, “Invincible,” as well as great material for Tina Turner, Bonnie Tyler, and others. Chapman, for his part, is famous mostly as a producer, most notably on the “Chinnichap” recordings of the ’70s and the breakthrough Blondie records. He also produced Benatar’s first album and at least one of her later recordings.

“Battlefield” may not be Benatar’s most popular song, but it’s by far the most covered song in her catalog. We found a few versions that standout from the field. Of these…
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