Thats A Cover Archives

That’s a Cover?: The Specials’ “A Message To You, Rudy”

Posted by Mike Tobyn at 9:00 am No Responses »

Mar 072025

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

In November 1979 there was evidence of a remarkable movement in British music. Top of the Pops, the pop music show watched by millions across the country, which had the ability to make or break careers, featured three songs from the 2 Tone record label. An independent collective of the bands The Specials and The Selecter, they had recently taken a decision to sign up Madness, who had similar musical influences. Although a major label marketed them, 2 Tone itself was a tiny, ramshackle outfit. Literally off-beat, as part of their Ska music. Yet here they all were on the UK’s flagship music show. They were on a show with Abba, Dr. Hook and Queen, and the finale was Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand doing “No More Tears.” The Specials and Madness dashed up to the studios from their joint tour to perform, although The Selecter could stay in Cardiff as their part could be reshown from their performance a few weeks before. The single that The Specials were promoting was 2 Tone’s “TT 5-A,” only the fourth single on the label (the first was a joint A-side which both got serial numbers). “A Message To You Rudy” has a clear message and a danceable tune, and is one of the most streamed and covered of The Specials canon. It is also a cover itself.

(Unfortunately, although people get a lot of pleasure from reruns of the series, that episode of Top of the Pops can no longer be shown on TV for reasons unrelated to British youth culture in 1979, so we don’t get the chance to officially relive the moment in its entirety).
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That’s A Cover?: “Got My Mind Set On You” (George Harrison / James Ray)

Posted by Adam Mason at 12:00 pm No Responses »

Feb 212025

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

George Harrison seemed an artist reborn upon the release of “Got My Mind Set On You” in 1987, in a way that compared with Paul Simon on “You Can Call Me Al” the previous year. No sad relic here of a legendary 1960s act with fading powers, whose days of selling gazillions of records were a long, long, long time past. No whiff of recent flop albums, or flop movies. Instead, a pop star wielding an insanely upbeat and wonderfully infectious pop nugget, reveling in an MTV-conquering video, and quite rightly storming up the singles charts in a style we’d come to associate with Madonna, Whitney Houston, and the Pet Shop Boys.

Caught up in the fun of it all, there was no reason to believe the track was anything other than a Harrison original, either, being exactly the kind of catchy rock ‘n’ roll number someone who’d been in the Beatles would come up with (right?). Only with a big 1980s pop sound: big drums, big horns, and big backing vocals. Besides, no other version of the song ever got played on the radio.

But the truth was this: Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set On You” was a cover. And a cover very much in the vein of early Beatles cuts “Please Mr. Postman,” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music,” and more specifically the George-fronted “Devil in Her Heart,” and “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby.” It was a cover that had everything to do with the American soul, R&B, and rock ’n’ roll that first inspired Harrison as the lead guitarist/singer in what would become the toppermost band in the world. It’s just that the original was by an artist a lot more unsung than the Marvelettes, Chuck Berry, the Donays, and Carl Perkins.

Essential to Harrison’s 1980s revitalization, then, on his biggest solo single since “My Sweet Lord” in 1970, was a mighty sayonara! to years of tribute and soundtrack doldrums and a nostalgic reconnection with an obscure and sorrowful 1962 non-hit by an unsuccessful and largely unknown black soul singer by the name of James Ray. Unlikely, we know! So it’s high time we offered more in the way of explanation. Specifically, the illumination of several key moments.
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That’s A Cover?: “Boogie with Stu” (Led Zeppelin / Ritchie Valens)

Posted by Tom McDonald at 11:00 am No Responses »

Feb 112025

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

If Led Zeppelin had made Physical Graffiti a single album rather than a double, “Boogie with Stu” would not have made the final cut. “Filler” is a dismissive term, but that’s what it was. (Of course, one band’s filler is another band’s gem.) The song was just a spontaneous jam, really, recorded in 1971 on an out-of-tune piano as they worked on Led Zeppelin IV. But when Zeppelin suddenly had an extra album-side to complete in 1975, they cleaned up the old recording and tossed the result onto side four, practically as an afterthought.

“Boogie with Stu” is treated like an afterthought, too, in those always-interesting and usually contentious discussions about Zeppelin covering and plagiarizing other artists. Sure, let’s talk “Dazed and Confused” and Jake Holmes, “Whole Lotta Love” and Willie Dixon, “The Lemon Song” and Chester Burnett, and all the other cases. But the discussion rarely gets around to the strange case of “Boogie with Stu” and Ritchie Valens. Or if it does, it’s only as an afterthought yet again.
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That’s A Cover?: “Drivin’ On 9” (The Breeders / Ed’s Redeeming Qualities)

Posted by Adam Mason at 2:00 pm 7 Responses »

Oct 132023

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

The Breeders—that female-fronted alt-rock supergroup forged long before Boygenius came along—are currently on tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their post-Nevermind, platinum-selling, grunge-pop triumph, Last Splash. They’re also boasting an “original analog edition” of the album which made them a mainstream success in 1993 and which, in 2022, came out #35 in Pitchfork’s Top 150 Records of the 1990s. That means, of course, that they’re giving “Drivin’ On 9” another bask in the sun. The record’s country-tinged anomaly may not have been a single, but it sure turned out to be a deeply loved, radio-friendly classic and a signature Breeders song—their second most popular track on Spotify, in fact, between “Cannonball” and “One Divine Hammer.”

It’s a song, furthermore, that the band continue to wheel out for significant public appearances, recognizing it as a towering presence in their catalog. They performed it in bed for Bedstock 2017 in support of MyMusicRx. They also played it in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lobby in September 2023, to console a few hundred people when forced to cut short their “Rock Hall Live” outdoor show due to a storm. Kim Deal wrapped her uniquely dirty-pretty voice around it for the thousandth time. Jim Macpherson tapped along on a nearby surface. Kelly Deal broke off her inaudible guitar plucking to play the solos on her phone. And Kim joked that she’s like Stevie Wonder, the whole thing being a funny, intimate, shambolic delight—shared on YouTube—that was nothing short of quintessential Breeders.

But here’s a thing:

The Breeders did not write the song. That’s according to @carriebradleyneves1839, who was quick to affix to the Rock Hall YouTube clip: “Words and music by Dom Leone and Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, published by Buck Tempo, copyright 1989.”

And here’s a bigger thing:

It’s a cover. That’s contrary to cover-song oracle SecondHandSongs, which notes “Steve Hickoff, Dom Leone” as the writers, but stamps “Original” on the Breeders release of August 30 1993.

From this, it’s certain that the Breeders’ “Drivin’ On 9” belongs to a very different camp to that of the Breeders’ “Happiness is a Warm Gun” or the Breeders’ “Lord of the Thighs.” Few people, to be sure, are aware of Steve Hickoff or Dom Leone in the same way they are the Beatles or Aerosmith, or know who or what Ed’s Redeeming Qualities is. Even fewer are able to credit the Ed’s version of 1989 as the official original. Or credit Ed’s as the first public performers of the song. Indeed, the true status of Ed’s Redeeming Qualities as the original artists as well as writers is seemingly lost in a distant 1980s haze of amateur musicianship and cult followings, where DIY recordings and demo tapes mattered, where ramshackle live shows in a shabby basement club in Boston could easily give birth to a ‘hit’ song, and where the word ‘official’ held very little sway.

So what’s the unofficial story of the perky yet strangely melancholy strummer that the Breeders made famous?
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That’s a Cover?: “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” (Rod Stewart / Crazy Horse)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 11:30 am 1 Response »

Nov 182022

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

Fifty years ago today, on November 18, 1972, Neil Young fired Danny Whitten. The 29-year-old guitarist had already been dismissed from Crazy Horse due to his drug use. Young gave him another chance to join his touring band, the Stray Gators, as they went out to promote Harvest. When Whitten proved he couldn’t handle that either, Young gave him fifty dollars and a plane ticket back to Los Angeles. That night, he got a phone call: Whitten had died of a drug overdose.

A crushed Young, who had already written “The Needle and the Damage Done” about Whitten, went on to record Tonight’s the Night, a tribute to him and to roadie Bruce Berry. These are some of Young’s strongest works and have all the impact today that they had on first release. But there’s another artistic work related to Whitten that’s arguably greater and longer lasting. And it came from the pen of Danny Whitten himself.
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That’s a Cover?: Rascal Flatts’ “Bless the Broken Road” (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) and “What Hurts the Most” (Mark Wills)

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 2:00 pm No Responses »

Oct 282022

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

When Rascal Flatts announced its plan to part ways after a farewell tour, it was the end of an era. An era when I awaited each spring album drop to bring me the next soundtrack to my summer. An era when my car actually had a CD drive, and it was only a question of which Rascal Flatts album was playing during each sunny drive (but let’s be real, it was probably Feels Like Today). An era when I was the girl in the front row singing (well, not quite front) and when my dad provided the wheels to bring me to the Still Feels Good concert (thanks, Dad!). The times of cellphones in the air and the crowds out there; no worries of germs in sight. I was jealous of my brother, who had tickets to the farewell tour, but then felt no relief when the tour was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic. Out, not with an encore, but with silence – the complete opposite of the feeling you might have felt listening to Rascal Flatts team up with Journey to sing “Don’t Stop Believing”.

Even with all of my experience fan-girling over Rascal Flatts (and being someone pretty invested in the world of cover songs), I did not know that two of the band’s mega-hits were covers in a long line of covers before them. How could I not know that every time “Bless the Broken Road” was played at a wedding, I was hearing a reimagining of the song, and that every time I belted out “What Hurts the Most” in times of angst that those were not the original words of Jay, Joe, and Gary?