I am inspired to post this after seeing Mariah Carey’s cover to I Still Believe. Believe it or not, I only later found out it was Brenda K. Starr who originally came out with the song. Mariah Carey was apparently a back up singer to Brenda K. Starr (something I also found out, when the song came out). It turns out Carey really liked the song. And the rest is history.
Anyways, I think Carey does a much better version of it. She belts it out, with passion and conviction. Starr just sings it monotone IMHO. This isn’t the first time this has happened, BTW. I like Kelly Clarkson’s My Grown Up Christmas List over Amy Grant’s version, ironically for much the same reasons.
Do any of the rest of you have any similar experiences with cover versions? Feel free to mention. And feel free to post links to Youtube if you want.
BTW, I could have sworn someone asked this exact same question. But I wasn’t sure. I did a Cafe Society forum search for ‘Cover’. And nothing came up. I even thoroughly search the page with my computer (Ctrl+F) just to make sure. And nothing. So it must be alright then.
I’ll take The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” over the Isley Brothers’ any day. Maybe I’m prejudiced in favor of the Fab Four, as always, but something about both the orchestration and John’s vocals seem to have so much more oomph. (John apparently really hurt his throat doing that song!)
I know we’ve done this before. But here I am again. This time I’ll nominate Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Texas Flood” (live versions, o’course) over the original.
I like Sadé but I prefer the Deftones version of “No Ordinary Love”; while it’s mostly faithful to the original, the menacing undertone is much more pronounced in the Deftones’ version that I feel is more appropriate to the song than Sadé’s very smooth original.
OK, now I’ve heard everything. Lenny Kravitz removed all of the soul and conviction of that song, and turned what was a searing guitar lead into a ho-hum piece of pop.
I like Erasure’s version of “Take A Chance On Me” better than the original ABBA version. Even though I like ABBA a lot.
My favorite version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is the Credence version. I’m not sure who gets credit for the “original” version, but it wasn’t CCR.
And I vastly prefer Tom Jones’ version of “Kiss” to the original Prince version. I can’t stand Prince.
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ version of “I Love Rock and Roll” is better than the Arrows.
Cindi Lauper’s version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is better than Robert Hazard’s.
I don’t know if they are better Works of Art, but I like Laura Brannigan’s version of “Self Control” better than Raf’s, and I like the Bangles’ version of “Hazy Shade of Winter” better than Simon & Garfunkle’s.
