Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
Massive Attack built a swift and sustained reputation right from the word go, as Blue Lines, their 1991 debut, virtually invented the whole trip-hop genre, and remains one of the best selling of that classification. I see Wikipedia describes trip-hop as “a psychedelic fusion of hip-hop and electronica, with slow tempos and an atmospheric sound, often incorporating elements of jazz, soul, funk, reggae, and R&B,” along with samples, often from film and elsewhere. Whilst that seems now a pretty good summation, at the time it was just so astonishingly different. Somehow, the unwieldy mix worked such alchemical magic, drawing together fans of any of those contributing parts, even if they didn’t especially love them all.
Mezzanine was album number 3, with a noticeably darker sound, adding industrial noise and post-punk to the palette. Outselling even Blue Lines, it became and still is their biggest selling release. Largely the baby of Robert Del Naja, it lead to some degree of conflict between he and the other members of the core trio membership of the band, Grant Marshall and Andrew Vowles. This meant Del Napa provided and put together most of the material, with the other two working mainly on the various loops of drum and bass used. Vowles then actually left the partnership shortly after release.
As a song, “Teardrop” was a rare instance, on Mezzanine, where Vowles had provided a track’s impetus, improvising the characteristic harpsichord figure in the studio. Vowles wanted Madonna to sing the lead vocal. She was very up for it, having earlier worked with the band (for “I Want You”). But Marshall and Vowles overruled him. They felt the ethereal tones of Elizabeth Fraser, from Cocteau Twins, would suit better the mood and melody. Fraser duly penned the words, later feeling they summed up her thoughts around her ex Jeff Buckley, despite being unaware his death at the time of writing.
Be that as it may, the combination of her lightweight vocal style and the gentle electronica prove to be unduly effective, explaining why “Teardrop” remains far and away the most covered of Massive Attack’s songs. It came out as Mezzanine‘s second single in April 1998, and reached #10 in the UK chart, still their highest home success, if faring better in other territories, notably Iceland, where it topped their chart. It took the TV series House M.D. using it as its theme song to give it any great traction in the U.S..
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