Cover Versions: Singing Other People's Songs

by Adam Sweeting

Girls Aloud record the Pointer Sisters' 'Jump'; Atomic Kitten record Blondie's 'The Tide is High' and Kool and the Gang's 'Ladies Night'' Westlife record Billy Joel's 'Uptown Girl', Phil Collin's 'Against All Odds', Abba's 'I Have a Dream', and Barry Manilow's 'Mandy'-Thanks to the boom in TV-created pop stars, ancient pop classics have never had it so good, with 'Unchained Melody' massacred afresh by Gareth Gates and 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' eviscerated by Hear'Say. But back in pop's early days, every record was a cover version. Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald were famous for interpreting other people's songs, and the closest Elvis Presley ever got to writing one was when his manager, Colonel Parker, arm-twisted the rights away from the original songwriters. The balance of power shifted when The Beatles and the Stones wrote all their own material, yet the great tradition of the cover version never died. In this elegantly-tooled volume, Adam Sweeting gets the lowdown on cover versions - the worst, the most popular, the most frequently recorded, the most successful, the stupidest, the most tasteless, the most influential, and the ones nobody got around to yet.

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

Reviews

[James Traxler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but interesting look at the dark art of cover versions.
Actually, it's not dark, but it is an art form.
Certain artists are good at reinterpreting other people's songs and find a new angle in their retelling. Or somehow discover a completely different way to look at a song. Some are replicate reprobates, or retell a turgid interpretation, or even miss the target entirely.
Sweeting pours sugar and scorn on one or the other, giving insight into the whole area.
As well as the covering artists, he comes at it from the perspective of the songwriters of the original songs.
The book is up to the time it was written (2004), and, although X Factor and so on may have died down somewhat, I suppose not a lot has particularly changed.
Amusing and spot on with his analysis. Worth a read.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 2004, a time before Spotify and Youtube; absolutely brilliant to find in a shop in 2023 with so many recommendations, especially in the A-Z at the back.