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100 best covers: #82 Travis “Baby one more time”

<< #83    |    #81 >>

So here’s one that you can place firmly in the fun column.

I came across this particular cover during a brief period in 2001 where I was a bit obsessed with Scottish alt-pop band Travis and I was on the hunt for everything they’d recorded. Appearing as a B-side to the 1999 single “Turn”, it was recorded live and you can actually hear the laughter from the audience as they start to recognize the song. The band themselves can be heard snickering at the beginning, especially at the forced falsetto moments, but by the end, they are indeed performing it in earnest.

I also didn’t recognize the tune at first during my first sampling of it. It’s slowed some, performed stripped down to only an acoustic guitar with Fran Healy being joined, gang style, by the rest of the band on vocals. When it clicked, I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing and that’s what I think is so wonderful about it. It’s the surprise factor. A teen pop song performed by a pop band of a different sort and it works. I think so anyways.

As for the original, I’m pretty sure I don’t have to work too hard to jog your memory about it. Which is good because I can’t say I know much about Ms. Spears. However, I certainly have been overexposed to a bunch of her songs over the years and this one was particularly ubiquitous at the end of the nineties. I remember watching the video for the first time in disbelief. It was so obviously a ploy, a riff on the catholic school girl fantasy, but it worked. The song was huge, making her over from a former Mouseketeer to a pop star in the blink of an eye. Still, she likely got too big, too fast, given her tabloid ready lifestyle, and has had to forge more than one comeback over her career.

It’s probably pretty obvious by now which version I prefer. But don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a hate on for the Britney, nor her version of the song. It’s well written and has a great hook. Her style and sound is just not to my taste.

Do you have an opinion on the matter? I’d love to hear it.

The cover:

The original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

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Tunes

100 best covers: #83 The Farm “Don’t you want me”

<< #84    |    #82 >>

Here’s a cover for the list that I realize might not be my most popular pick. I’m well aware that it is purely about nostalgia and time and place. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

When I was very young, I had a vinyl collection, mostly 45s, and mostly records connected with storybooks from the Walt Disney and Sesame Street family. I don’t know what age I was, but definitely before ten years old, I received my first “real” music record from one of my cool aunts, probably my Aunt Kathy. It was, as you might have guessed, the 7” single of Human League’s “Don’t you want me”, backed with “Seconds”. Of course, I didn’t know then that it was the fourth single to be released off the synth pop group’s third album, heck, I didn’t even know what synth pop was, but I played it all the time, along with its B-side, and danced around my little bedroom like a maniac.

Just under a decade or so later, I had just graduated high school and was wondering what to do with my life. I was quite deep into music, this new alternative stuff, mostly of the baggy, madchester persuasion, and one of my favourite albums of the moment was “Spartacus”, the debut album by The Farm. My friend Andrew Rodriguez got a copy of the sophomore release, “Love see no colour”, for Christmas, which he promptly recorded for me. I won’t lie. I was a bit disappointed with the first few songs but then, there were some higher moments, and then, six songs in was a cover of this song from my youth. I fell in love with it all over again. I only later learned that the cover was originally recorded for an NME-related compilation called “Ruby Trax” a few years later when I picked it up in a used CD store on McCaul street in Toronto.

Despite being recorded almost a decade apart, the two versions are not all that far apart in sound. The Human League’s “Don’t you want me” is definitely more synth heavy and mechanical and The Farm’s cover has more guitar work and some synth flourish to plug the gaps left by the austere original. Nevertheless, both are quite dated sounding today. Again, definitely time and place. And if I hadn’t been there for both originally, this post might not have happened at all.

Thoughts?

The cover:

The original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #84 Crash Test Dummies “Androgynous”

<< #85    |    #83 >>

Back at the end of April, I railed on about my love for the “The ghosts that haunt me”, the debut album by Winnipeg’s Crash Test Dummies, as part of my Best tunes of 1991 series (“Superman’s song” at #24). That darned cassette definitely got a workout in both my Walkman and my stereo while at home. I played it so often that I pretty much knew all the words to all ten songs on the album, though I’m sure studying the lyrics in the foldout cassette cover didn’t hurt. It was here that I was first tipped off that “Androgynous”, track three on side two, was a cover, the lyrics attributed to a “P. Westerberg”.

It was years, though, before I made the connection between that name and the legendary American punk rock band from the 80s: The Replacements. And years still until I actually sat down to listen to the original. It was, in fact, just this past week that I brought it up on YouTube, figuring I should probably do so since I’d be writing about it. I almost felt like a cheat when I made up this covers list, including Crash Test Dummies’ version on it as one of my favourite ever, not knowing the song on which it was based. But back in the day, I loved singing along to this song so much.

“Here come Dick, he’s wearing a skirt
Here comes Jane, you know she’s sporting a chain
Same hair, revolution
Same build, evolution
Tomorrow who’s gonna fuss
And they love each other so
Androgynous”

The version I know starts off slow and plodding, folky like the rest of the album, while Brad Robert’s bass-baritone melds with Ellen Reid’s angelic textures, until it picks up to a foot stomping climax. I checked out two versions of The Replacements performing it: what I think is the original and a live version performed in recent years. Their original has a juke joint rockabilly feel, plonking piano and sing along vocals but live, it has an even more raw edge, focused more with guitars.

Given that I haven’t as yet put aside time to explore more of The Replacements’ work, I don’t know how this song even fits within their back catalogue. I do like their version as well, so does this mean I need to check them out? Replacements fans, help me out.

The cover:

The original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.