Aug 232017
 

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.

This week we’re working through the entire six decades that produced over 100 versions of “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” the timeless Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic. If you missed yesterday’s post, where we introduced the song and “covered” its origins, you can find it here.

Part II: The ’70s

R.B. Greaves’ cover of “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” to our mind the best cover version of the ‘60s, vanished from the Billboard charts in March of 1970. The rest of this decade pretty much went downhill after that. Not every decade has been great for covers of the song, but the ‘70s represent the low-water mark. Is that an indictment of this decade’s popular music in general? Possibly.

It would be hard to argue the case that any of our choices below is good enough to move forward in a best-of-all-time playoff. Half of the verified baker’s dozen of covers released were instrumentals – the highest whole number and percentage for any decade. Thankfully, most are not available online, but if you must, here are the Moog synthesizer and “happy” Hammond organ versions. That doesn’t mean everything was bad. But after the standouts, we’ll point out a few dishonorable mentions before moving forward tomorrow. So in the ‘70s…
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Aug 162013
 

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

1967 found the Rolling Stones still struggling to find their true voice. Sure, they’d had their across-the-board number-one hit a couple of years earlier with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” but both their singles and albums found them following the trends of the day, not truly leading the way. It wouldn’t be until 1968’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” that they would really break free of the pack and enter their glorious Golden Age.
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