Five Good Covers: “Fame” (Irene Cara)

 Posted by at 12:00 pm  1 Response »
Mar 182025
 

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

The original 1980 movie Fame was a gritty affair. British director Alan Parker wanted to produce a piece which warned against the folly of seeking validation for yourself from others alone, and how that impulse could be exploited. Having taken control of the project, he hardened up the script and themes, to the extent that New York’s High School for the Performing Arts withdrew co-operation.  The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rating for the film is currently a “15” (equivalent to “R”) noting the use of strong language, nudity and drug use. Exploitative pornography, abortion, and repressed homosexuality are also themes. It is a warning as much as a celebration of Fame as a lifestyle choice.
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Good, Better, Best: “Funkytown” (Lipps Inc.)

 Posted by at 1:00 pm  3 Responses »
Oct 012019
 

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.

covers of funkytown

Lipps Inc. may be considered a one-hit wonder, but this big hit is pretty epic. It was even enough to get the band inducted into the (Minnesota) Music Hall of Fame. I just rewatched the original music video, and it is a lot to take in (a deep dive into the weird history of the video can be found here for the curious). The two dancers’ outfits would make great (albeit obscure) Halloween costumes, though.

The band’s musicians rotated frequently, but Cynthia Johnson’s vocals provided consistency. In 1976, before joining the band, she was crowned Miss Black Minnesota USA. After Lipps Inc. dismantled, she went on to a solo career, including being part of the award-winning gospel group Sounds of Blackness. She is also an accomplished saxophonist and host of a 2013 documentary of American cities called, what else, “Funkytown.” Johnson herself is clearly not a one-hit wonder.

Now let’s see how others reinterpret this dance party classic.

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Five Good Covers: Stayin’ Alive (The Bee Gees)

 Posted by at 5:00 pm  8 Responses »
Feb 142014
 

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

In 1988, Rolling Stone named “Stayin’ Alive” one of the 100 top singles of the last 25 years, and they asked the Bee Gees to comment; how did they feel about the song? The terse response: “We’d like to dress it up in a white suit and gold chains and set it on fire.” It’s an understandable reaction – for all the wealth and fame the song brought them, it also swept aside their estimable back catalog and pigeonholed them as Disco with a capital Dis, so much so that when the genre died, the Bee Gees’ commercial success in the U.S. died with it.

But for all the venom directed “Stayin’ Alive”‘s way, for all its use as a punchline from Airplane! to Ted, people can’t get away from how good a song it is. “Look at great huge Maurice Gibb, singing like Donald Duck on ‘Stayin’ Alive,'” Roger Daltrey of the Who carped in 1978, then instantly added, “And that’s a great song. Bruce Springsteen could sing that lyric.”
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