Creative Covers # 1

Cover versions are only as good as their interpreter's vision. By that I mean their ability to imbue someone else's work with their own personality, style and emotions. By simply parroting off another's song verbatim even if pitch perfect, the song is inevitably inferior to the original. It communicates nothing, apart from implying that the performer has nothing to say himself.
              Truly great cover versions are not really covers at all but new songs in themselves- they may use the same chords and structures as the originals, yet in tone and meaning they are changed beyond recognition. One artist's song of praise can be another's lamentation. Joy can become despair in the hands of another. It all hinges on their ability to inhabit the song, the ability that we, as listeners do unconsciously, each time we hear a song we love.To inhabit, to haunt, to occupy the vessel of the song. This subjectivity is what is great about art, and songs especially, being inherently unstable and malleable.
             There are countless songs which could fit this criteria, yet the one which sparked the idea was Elliott Smith's version of Big Star's 'Thirteen'.
             On the posthumously released New Moon, a fecund collection of offcuts from throughout the troubled bard's career, the song comes over as a simple almost parenthetical conversation the artist is having with himself. With just a guitar and vocals, Smith's take has none of the polish of Big Star's original version. Yet with the fragile intimacy of his voice he manages to transform the gentle wistfulness of the original into a lover's desperate plea.
  It's easy to see what attracted Smith the the song. It's a slice of classic, understated songwriting.The melody perhaps too conventionally pretty to be a Smith original, but the lyrics suit his exquisite sensitivity. They play to his outsider sensibility. The line "would you be an outcast for my love", becomes especially poignant, transforming what could be read as tenuous optimism in the original, into a yearning from a wounded lover at odds with the world and everyone around it-"tell your dad get off my back". The romanticism of the song becomes something tragic, as if Smith knows too well what the answer to the question will be, and the futility of his asking.
            It's also a perfect example of the show not tell aesthetic, every detail combining to the overall picture. So spontaneous sounding, yet beautifully crafted. This is why the sparseness of Smith's take lends itself beautifully to the song. It helps create the intimate illusion that we are eavesdropping on Smith's fresh thoughts: that he is the lover. There is always this slightly uncomfortable sense that Smith's songs are a part of the very core of his being. Just a cursory glance at some of the footage on you tube of him shows a man possessed while playing. Impelled to perform from the powerful emotions that no doubt led to his tragic demise.
              Despite the inevitable confusing and overlap between artist and man, it is futile to look at Smith's oeuvre in light of his suicide. As tempting as it is to morbidly pore over his songs as if a kind of slo-mo post mortem, this is unhealthy. And it's an injustice to the songs, implying that they are only fascinating as a glimpse into mental illness, only interesting because he died (which is patently not true). So as awful a footnote his death is, it is but that: a footnote. It is more worthwhile to separate the songs from the life and celebrate them for the glimmering pearls of beauty they are, of how his life produced these in spite of the suffering, not because of it. How it's a boon that this guy hung around long enough to produce a body of work that is now a solace for anyone experiencing a tough time. Just a shame he couldn't work out his own troubles.
           So (apologies for the digression), a worthy start to a new subsection on the site, I feel. Here the artist puts something into the song that definitely was not there before. Using it as a vessel for translating his own turmoil and experience, as we all do when something moves us. Thus making the music more than just a series of notes or sound vibrations, making it mean something.
                       
        

Obviously not the same version as that on New Moon, though appropriate in light of the discussion I feel.