A thread about song remakes (for a change)

Cafe Society
1

I know we’ve talked about remakes before but I want to specifically address when a word or phrase is changed for no apparent good reason. What got me thinking about it is Disturbed’s cover of Genesis’s “Land of Confusion”. This version pisses me off in many, many ways, not the least of which is David “don’t call me Dave” Draiman’s monkey sounds, but I digress. In the original there’s a part (I don’t know if you’d call it the bridge, exactly) where the singer is remembering a better time long ago

"… when the sun was shining and the stars were bright all through the night
and the sound of your laughter as I held you tight . . "

Disturbed’s version has the last line changed to ". . . in the wake of this madness as I held you tight " . What, the imagery of laughter isn’t angsty and dark enough for you, Dave? Not to mention the line doesn’t make sense in this context, it’s just so conspicuous in its wanna be toughness. Every time I hear it it just pisses me off.

Another one is that suckfest of a cover of Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” by The Ataris. Shit, their name alone irritates me. What’s the deal with changing the line “I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” to “I saw a Black Flag sticker. . .” ? Are these douches even old enough to *know * Atari and / or Black Flag? Considering they covered the song almost note for note in every other way, what was the purpose of such a weak attempt at “updating” it?

I’m no purist by any means and am capable of enjoying an artist’s own spin on something but when I hear either of these songs I want to shoot a rubber band at someone’s face. Anybody else have examples of songs that were changed lyrically and not for the better?

2

Maybe they just like Black Flag? :wink:

I’ll try to think of some examples, but I did like your comments about Disturbed. Nice work.

3

Actually, I kind of liked the “Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac” - it just flows well - but I admit that when I first heard it I thought “How the hell do you know anything about Black Flag? Raid your mom’s tape collection or something?”

4

I’ve mentioned this one before. It’s not my favorite song (by a long shot), but it bothers me that the recent remake of Big Yellow Taxi changed the song so that the semiclever rhyme no longer makes any sense.

Original:

“I’d take all the trees, put 'em in a Tree Museum
Then charge everyone a buck and a half just to see 'em.”

New:

“Then charge everyone a dollar and a half just to see them.”
Why change “'em” (so that “see 'em” rhymes with “museum”) to “see them”, which sounds klunky, and doesn’t?

You want lyrics changes that make no sense? Get the CD Golden Throats and listen to Andy Griffiths cover of House of the Rising Sun. The Animals’ version that I’m familiar with (and that gets played all the time) is reportedly already severely watered down, but the Andy Griffith version simply makes no sense. Brothel? What brothel?

5

When the Bangles covered Hazy Shade of Winter they left out the lyrics

At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory skips
Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme.
Drinking my vodka and lime

And another Paul Simon one; in various performances of Kodachrome, the line can be either “everything looks worse in black and white” or “everything looks better in black and white”.

6

Joan Baez’s remake of “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down.”

Original lyrics:

“Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again.”

Baez’s version:

“Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
Til so much cavalry came and tore up the tracks again.”

It moves pointless from the specific to the ludicrously vague, as though she never learned the lyrics before singing the song.

7

Cal, the original lyrics to “Big Yellow Taxi” are:

“They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em.”

Whose version contains the line you quoted?

If some bunch of kids ruined the rhyme of “museum / to see 'em”, that suggests an inability to comprehend wordplay.

8

Well, it was pretty much just that when the original was wrote, the Dead Heads of old are now the older generation driving Cadillacs, something they never would have done while Dead Heads, cause they were young, hip, and cool. Similar thing with Black Flag. Back in th day, being their fan and crap was probably pretty damn cool, and now a lot of those people are older and driving Cadillac’s. But I agree that The Atari’s themselves are too young to comment on something like that, still being a generation removed from them (as opposed to the original, where the singer was referring to his own generation.)

9

And, I think more to the point, they were anti-consumerism. Seeing a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac wouldn’t surprise me a bit these days; the mass selling-out of the original hippies is old, old news. Seeing a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac would surprise me mightily, though.

(I’m not the type to accuse folks of “selling out,” but the mindset of the song clearly has something along those lines in mind. The original song, that is; I haven’t heard the Ataris’ version, nor do I have much/any desire to.)