I just CANNOT stand it when people remake songs! 9 out of 10 times the original was better. These days, it seems like I can’t turn on the radio without hearing some song remade or sampled. Maybe I might be a bit biased, since I like 60’s and 70’s music, but still!
If anyone can name any good OR awful remakes…
My least favorites are: some punk version of brown eyed girl, the Fugees sampling Angel of the Morning, and… drumroll please
Britney Spears redoing “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. I was sure the world was going to end.
Michael Jackson’s remake of “Come Together”. I almost died when we were listening to the original Beatles tune and my (at the time) ten-year-old son saying, “Who’s that? I didn’t know somebody did a remake of that Michael Jackson song.” I have redoubled my efforts to educate him to the classics. Classic rock, that is!
Same thing she said, but substitute the word “movie” for “song”. The animated Grinch is a great flick; do we really need a live-action one whose sole purpose seems to be to exactly mimick the cartoon?
Well LaurAnge, I agree with you. But I did think Lenny Kravitz’s AMERICAN WOMAN was good. And Clapton’s remake of LAYLA was cool. I grew up thinking that Elton John’s LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS was an original. When I heard the Beatles, I ended up liking it better.
I wasn’t too crazy about Janet Jackson’s sample of BIG YELLOW TAXI either. But I’m a fuddy-duddy.
Since i’m a rabid Guess Who fan, the American Woman remake disgusted me. But I also got to laugh, since a whole theme of this song is kinda American-bashing (Guess Who were Canadian) it was funny to see an American sing it.
But But But… Then we would have never gotten Devo’s remake of Satisfaction, or Me First and The Gimme Gimme’s doing Up-Town Girl, or Anal-Cunt doing the works of Morrisey, or several popular Rolling Stones songs (sorry I can’t remember which), or countless other good remakes.
Save Ferris’ ska remake of “Come on Eileen” (originally done by Dexy’s Midnight Runner) was actually better than the original, IMHO of course. Faster, with just a better sound.
MXPX’s version of “Summer of 69” is so much better than the original, that I cannot even listen to Bryan Adams’ version.
However, I will agree with you that a good 95% of the remade songs out there are a total waste. (10k Maniacs version of “Because the Night” anyone?) And don’t even get me started on the trend of remaking movies. . . blech.
This far, and nobody’s mentioned Madonna’s pointless cover of “American Pie” by Don McLean?
And if you’re going to mention “Satisfaction,” Otis Redding has a cover that inspires giggles among some of my friends. The whole opening guitar riff re-arranged for horns, with little trills and Motown flourishes… hee hee.
To be fair, I thought the pop-ified cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” was decent, if not as good as the original.
I perfectly respect the right of an artist to do whatever they want with their own material. It’s your song, dude, go to town. But Clapton’s “Layla” from “Unplugged” was, IMNSHO, one of the most god-awful instances of artistic betrayal/suicide I’ve ever witnessed.
Look at the song in context. “Layla” was a song written by a man who was in the throes of heroin addiction, who happened to be in love with his best friend’s wife. He could not really come out and tell either of them directly, and he was in a drugged stupor most of the time. So, while he is holed up in the recording studio with a bunch of junkie musician friends, he puts together this amazingly painful cry of love and frustration, backed with screaming electric slide guitars.
And what does he do with it? Turns it into a boring, plodding, lounge-music singalong, with none of its previous power. Bah. Screw that. It divorces the song from any of its meaning.
Jewel did the same thing with “You Were Meant for Me.” On the original pressings of her first album, it was a happy, upbeat, jangly-electric-guitars pop song. It was released as the follow-up to “Who Will Save Your Soul?”, with a video directed by Sean Penn. Unfortunately, Jewel, her label, and her management discovered that people weren’t responding; they wanted something exactly like the first single. So she re-recorded it as the dragging, sappy, acoustic-guitar ballad we’ve come to know and hate.
I have a hard time respecting artists who don’t trust their own material.
Well, since Layla WAS Clapton’s own song, who cares?
I think some remakes are good, Boyz II Men did a GREAT accapella rendition of the Beatles’ Yesterday, which sounds different, but good. And they also did In the Still of the Night, which sounds pretty neat.
And hey, the BEATLES did remakes-Twist and Shout, You Really Got A Hold On Me, Roll Over Beethoven, etc etc.
John Lennon did a great version of Stand By Me.
Other remakes just, well, suck. So I think it’s basically a gamble.
Some make it, some don’t.
I always thought of it as an interesting look at the artist’s journey through life. Maybe Layla meant one thing to him when it was a hard-rockin’ power hit, and another thing when it was the “lounge-music singalong”.
Speaking of “lounge-music singalongs”, has anyone every heard Steve Lawrence and Edie Gormet’s loungy re-make of Black Hole Sun? I had no idea that the song was pretty… It’s much better than soundgarden, IMHO, but I was never much of a Soundgarden fan…
About ten years back Rhino Records released a nifty CD anthology called Black on White, which collected about fifteen remakes by black R&B and soul artists of songs by white rockers. See the irony? {nudge, nudge} Huh? You get it? Huh? {nudge}
It was never less that “interesting,” and a lot of it was outstanding.
Two cuts that I recall as particular standouts were Aretha Franklin doing The Band’s “The Weight,” and Wicked Wilson Pickett doing Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come.”
I HATE the American Woman remake, I HATE the American Pie remake, Oasis should be shot for their version of “I Am the Walrus”, Garth Brooks should be shot for his version of “Rock and Roll All Night”.
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band did a good cover of “C’est La Vie” by Chuck Berry originally, Aerosmith did a good cover of “Come Together”, Fiona Apple did a (surprisingly) eerie cover of “Across the Universe”.
Big Blue Missile did an awful cover of “Time of the Season”, Matchbox 20 did a decent cover of “Time After Time”, and Live did a cover of “Imagine” that ROCKED when I saw them in concert.
I’ve got to disagree with you about “Layla”. I think you’re right on with the interpretation of the original version. He was crazy, out of his mind in unrequited love, so the emotions were still raw.
I would say the acoustic version is the mellow (and wiser?) Clapton looking back with a bittersweet perspective. The bluesy tone fits it perfectly. I’ll admit to bias, it’s one of my favorite songs on my favorite album.
Ok, somebody fill me in. I listen to the classic rock station and they play Layla all the time. But since it’s always the same version, I have no basis for comparison. I’ve only heard the one version.
So which version does the radio station play 6 times a day? It’s long and toward the end it changes dramatically and gets real slow. If this is the “sucky” version, the other must be outstanding. The one I hear, I like a lot.
You’re descibing the classic, original “electric” version, that Clapton did with Derek and the Dominos. The other version is a slow, acoustic version he did on the “Unplugged” album. It’s a very different sound, in fact, when he begins to play it, he challenges the audience to “See if you can spot this one.”
Oh, hell. Now you’ve done it. I hadn’t come across this before, so I went and checked it out. Covers of “She’s About a Mover” and “96 Tears” (the latter by Jimmy Ruffin), along with “Walk Away Renee” done by the Four Tops? Have to have it. Have to. Must concoct plausible explanation for wife . . . .
I don’t think I’ve mentioned my mania for “96 Tears” before, have I? Now there’s a song that’s been subjected to remakes good, bad, and indifferent by everyone from Joe “King” Carrasco to Jonathan Richman to Suicide to Garland Jeffreys to Eddie and the Hot Rods to The Stranglers.