A beautiful cover is a transcendent thing. It can tell so much about an artist’s listening habits, and even more about their songwriting style. The cover itself can change perspectives on exactly what the original song was supposed to be about, elevating it from trifle or forgotten catalog piece to a diamond.
But a cover of a Top 40 song? That’s a different story. The song is a known quantity, and is usually universally hated (at least dismissed) by those listening. As the putrid Punk Goes Pop series has shown us, bands have little idea how to reinvent the confectionery pop sugar they hear on the radio into something powerful.
In an effort to change the negative stigma of covering a Top 40 song, here are four pitch-perfect examples of alternative entities spinning Top 40 to their own whims most excellently.
The Vaccines – “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” (Katy Perry)
The most recent example from this list, the buzzy alt-rock group The Vaccines have faded after their breakout single “Wrecking Ball (Ra Ra Ra),” but still managed to turn an ebullient, summer-dominating mammoth of a song into their own slackadaisical post-party anthem. Maybe waxing a little too Interpol, but the rambling chorus edit that takes out the cloying “damn” makes this a keeper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbTmJFB33og
Frightened Rabbit (feat. Craig Finn) – “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (Elton John and Kiki Dee)
The oldest original song of the bunch, the Scottish heavy rockers (plus The Hold Steady guy!) get major points for doing the obvious thing: Putting two many dudes’ voices and making them sing sweet nothings to each other. FR put their trademark heavy atmosphere all around the gruff vocalled love song, but the real draw is the romance still inherent in two platonic men singing to each other.
Ryan Adams – “Wonderwall” (Oasis)
In most cases, the surefire way to re-contextualize a pop song is to strip it to its bare parts and see what’s left. Ryan Adams, still a moderately alt figure (if only alt.country) when he warped the Gallagher brothers’ biggest hit for his own purposes in 2004, achieves a level of transcendence truly special to the great Top 40 covers. He fully realizes the song in a way the original artist could not. Because Oasis’ lyrics were frequently overly confounding, their big echo guitar chunk and “wah-wah” voices were the big draw. Here Adams makes the emotion of the song infuse the music, particularly thicket of guitar strings around the second chorus. He takes his time, and in a way the Gallagher brothers could not, Adams makes “Wonderwall” his own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78KHK6oE3h8&feature=fvst
Ted Leo – “Since U Been Gone” (Kelly Clarkson) / “Maps” (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Gen-Y punks, or any punks for that matter, are not especially keen to the Top 40 players. But Ted Leo, the paragon of workmanlike force behind such rabble rousers as “Sons of Cain” and “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” makes a convincing statement that maybe punks should wise up. The furious down-strumming energy Leo brings to pretty much every song he does makes this famous Kelly Clarkson mega-hit as much a punk anthem as any song he’s ever created. When Leo stretches into his not-slightly-weaker-than-Clarkson’s falsetto, it carries an emotion and realism that an extremely gifted singer cannot hope to match. This is real emotional catharsis sung by a normal voice, not some lofty Swedish-penned monolith hit. “Since You Been Gone” was never supposed to be sung by Kelly Clarkson, it was meant to be sung by Ted Leo, with a palm-muted guitar and nothing else. There is no other way to capture the genuine shackle-shaking expressed here in a perfect cover.
