Cowboy Junkies Archives

Good, Better, Best: “Isn’t It a Pity” (George Harrison)

Posted by Tom McDonald at 10:00 am 4 Responses »

Jun 192026

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.

Isn’t it a shame that George Harrison had to live so long in the shadow of Lennon/McCartney? But then, all songwriters live in that shadow–including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, whose solo careers never reached the creative heights of their partnership years. George was only unique in that some of his best songs were repeatedly denied a serious hearing by his own band. For example, “Isn’t It a Pity.”

Harrison pitched the song as early as Revolver in 1966. In Lennon’s judgement, it didn’t make the grade, neither for that album nor for any subsequent Beatle album. In Peter Jackson’s Get Back, there’s footage of George complaining about this to Lennon. The scene was a revelation to those who assumed (like I did) that “Isn’t It a Pity” (released in November 1970) was a hot take on the acrimonious Beatles breakup announced in April 1970.

So the question becomes, what reasons did George have in 1966 to feel so bleak? At age 23, he was already rich and famous beyond measure, the most influential guitarist of his guitar-obsessed generation. He was newly married to the actress/model Patti Boyd. He didn’t even have to tour anymore. Apart from the taxman, what did he have to moan about?

The early creation of “Isn’t It a Pity” affirms that there was substance to the trope of George as the “Spiritual Beatle.” His love of Indian music and his budding friendship with Ravi Shankar led to a deep engagement with Eastern spiritual concepts. Mature enough to see through material success, he pondered the nature of suffering, the traps of ego, greed, and ignorance. As much as the other Beatles got swept up in these newfound fascinations–transcendental meditation, especially–Lennon and McCartney (and manager Brian Epstein) may have felt George’s world-weariness needed to be held in check. After all, the band still felt compelled to project positivity in this post-touring period, with songs like “Good Day Sunshine,” “Getting Better,” and “All You Need is Love.”

For all his cynicism, George could also write cheerfully about love and sunshine with the best of them. His Abbey Road contributions “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” make that obvious. More to the point, consider the first single from his first post-Beatles solo album, All Things Must Pass, “My Sweet Lord” / “Isn’t It a Pity.” On this double A-side, George expresses something like spiritual rapture and joy on one side, and then on the flip side the opposite. Both sides are the real George Harrison.

It seems clear in retrospect that “My Sweet Lord” was really the A-est of the single’s two sides. “Isn’t It a Pity” seems not to have maintained the excitement it generated at the start. Several other tracks from All Things Must Pass have proven more popular in time, including the title track, the album’s third single, “What is Life,” and of course “My Sweet Lord,” with an order of magnitude more streams than any other song on the triple album.

So with “Here Comes the Sun” being the most successful Beatles song (in the streaming era at least), and “My Sweet Lord” being by far George’s best-selling solo track, let’s look again at the brooding flip side of George Harrison. And how other artists have responded to it.
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The 40 Best David Bowie Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 8:00 am 4 Responses »

Mar 282025

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting. – David Bowie

In March 1975, David Bowie released Young Americans, the album that saw him move from glam rock to Philly soul. It was his first top ten album in America, featuring his first number one song in “Fame.” Fifty years later, that golden anniversary is enough of a hook to hang a Cover Me Best Covers Ever feature on. But the remarkable thing about David Bowie is, this was little more than a blip in his career. He had other personas to invent, other forms to master, other brilliancies to create. And he wouldn’t rest until (long after) he did.

Bowie’s influence on popular culture cannot be overstated, and not just in the music world – I’m convinced that roughly one-third of Tilda Swinton is David Bowie. For millions of misfits worldwide, he himself was the freak flag, the one who made it okay to be other than. I’ll help you with the pain, he sang. You’re not alone. Give me your hands. ‘Cause you’re wonderful. It’s a message that still sings out today, in Bowie’s songs and in the work of those he influenced.

Now, with these forty covers, we have a combination of the two. Bowie recorded the earliest song here at the age of twenty, the most recent at sixty-eight, months away from his death. It’s a true wonder how high the bar of quality stayed for nearly half a century. It’s not a wonder how good the covers are, though – when inspired by the one who inspired them to step up, step out, step on stage, everyone here went a little bit out of their depth and did something exciting.

And now, let’s dance.

– Patrick Robbins, Features Editor

The 75 Best Beatles Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 24 Responses »

Feb 232024

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Sixty years ago this month, The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show. You don’t need us to tell you what a momentous occasion this was; entire books have been written on the subject. Suffice to say we’re using the anniversary as our excuse to finally devote a Best Covers Ever to perhaps the biggest band of them all. We’ve done Dylan. We’ve done the Stones. We’ve done Dolly and Springsteen and Prince. But there was one last giant remaining.

Though it’s difficult to measure this precisely, The Beatles are the most-covered artist of all time according to the two biggest covers databases on the internet (SecondHandSongs, WhoSampled). And that certainly feels right. “Yesterday” is often cited as the most-covered song of all time, though that needs qualifiers (a ton of Christmas standards would beat it). But, again, it feels right. The Beatles were ubiquitous in their day, and they’ve been ubiquitous ever since. They just had a chart-topping single last month, the A.I.-assisted “Now and Then,” which was duly covered widely. If “Carnival of Light” ever surfaces, no doubt a carnival of covers will soon follow. Continue reading »

The 35 Best Velvet Underground Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 10:30 am 8 Responses »

Oct 272023

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

On October 27, 2013, ten years ago today, Lou Reed died. I happened to be in New York City at the time, and his passing was a lead story on the 11 o’clock news. It was as though a part of the city itself had died. Which, inescapably, it had. Reed embodied NYC, from its seedy back rooms to its secret heart, in a way few other people, let alone musicians, ever did.

While Reed’s solo career is highly and deservingly accoladed, it still got overshadowed by the Velvet Underground. Reed’s first band featured Welsh musician John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen Tucker, with Nico singing on the first album and Doug Yule replacing Cale in 1968. The band’s four studio albums started ripples that turned into tsunamis; they went from secret-handshake status to Hall of Fame giants, their influence right up there with the Beatles.

We’re honoring Lou and Company with this collection of covers. Some covers couldn’t hold a candle to the original (you’ll find no “Heroin” here), but many of the originals were receptive to another artist’s distinctive stamp. Whether you prefer the first or what followed, you’ll hear the sound of immortality as it opens yet another path of discovery.

–Patrick Robbins, Features Editor

Five Good Covers: “Baby, Please Don’t Go”

Posted by Seuras Og at 12:00 pm 3 Responses »

Feb 242023

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

What makes the original artist of a cover? Does it depend on which you heard first? Me, I doubt even I could pretend my initial exposure to “Baby Please Don’t Go” was the original I held dearest and first to my heart. I’ll go further: I bet, that for many, the first notes of “Baby Please Don’t Go” they ever heard came from the whip-thin guitar of Billy Harrison (unless the rumors are true and it was actually session veteran Jimmy Page). He was part of Belfast’s finest, Them, with none other than Mr. Grumpyguts himself, Van Morrison, in moodily magnificent vocal form even then.

But no, Them’s take wasn’t the original, that being the domain of good old trad. arr., responsible for any number of ancient ditties that have transformed and transmogrified over the ages, across oceans and genres. But for the purposes of this piece, Them’s take is my original, even if their version was drawn from the twin wells of Big Joe Williams, the first recorded iteration, in 1935, and John Lee Hooker‘s 1949 version, which lopped the “please” off the title.
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Review: Cowboy Junkies’ ‘Songs of the Recollection’

Posted by Seuras Og at 10:00 am No Responses »

Mar 282022

That the venerable Canadian band Cowboy Junkies should preface their new album, Songs of the Recollection, with a comment that, long before they were musicians, they were music fans, should be no great surprise. Anyone in the least bit familiar with their work will be already aware of their erudite taste in that department, such is the body of covers work they have built up over the years, on their own recordings and their myriad contributions to innumerable tribute albums. Unsurprisingly, we here are big fans and have featured them, or of them, more than the once.

Songs of the Recollection brings together some obscure oldies recorded for other projects (just over half the album’s tracks being previously available), plus a few newly minted ones; as ever, the band extends across genres and styles in their own idiosyncratic way, making it feel the songs were specially written for their spare minimalism, all spiky guitars in slo-mo, and Margo Timmins’ haunting voice, a glimpse of Canada’s icy north.
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