Pete Wilding scans covers from cover to cover and prepares to take cover from some righteous readers' wrath...




THERE IS AN OLD ADAGE in showbiz – never remake a classic. You’re doomed to mess it up and bring indignity upon all involved. It’s kinda like trying to pull a bridesmaid at your sister’s wedding, only to end up drunkenly soiling yourself on the dancefloor.

Of course, and to the infinite discredit of all involved, that is nonsense. If there is a relevant rule of thumb, it probably reads something like, “if you have a ridiculous idea to cover a great record by an artist whose bootlaces you will never be fit to tie, go right ahead – legions of sycophants will tell you that you’re a genius, an artist of tremendous creativity, forever concealing the truth – you are an artless fool.”

The cover song is a curious creature, an enigma of the highest order that continues to fascinate and seduce us. During the sixties, when the music industry was essentially a hazy love-in of mutual back-scratching, there was a culture of not only performing one another’s songs, but of performing together: The Band’s The Last Waltz contains cameos by about 900 different artists, though the exact number will never be known. Keith Richards, furthermore, claimed that he and Gram Parsons performed together so many times that they practically “osmosed” – though the chemical implications of that claim don’t bear thinking about. The bands nearly merged completely at one point, leading to the biggest gig of all – Woodstock.

Now of course, it is the natural order for a young, relatively talentless upstart to be moulded like putty in the hands of Walsh or Cowell before single-handedly violating a classic song and selling it as their own to thousands of fans yet to reach puberty.

Such is the depth of material – rescued from the archives, sought from a time when great, original pop songs were not merely still in production but almost commonplace – and the ignorance of much of the current market, that many of the new generation can unofficially claim such songs as their own. I’m being harsh, of course. But the cynicism of the industry calls for it. When my younger sister first heard the Chili Peppers’ Under The Bridge, she addressed me smugly with, “Ha – Chili Peppers covered All Saints!” Needless to say, I was speechless.

My point is this: When artists collaborated and performed each other’s material for our parents’ (and even, dare I say it, grandparents’) enjoyment, it was a mutual appreciation, for the most part a dignified commonwealth approach to a pool of material that appeared to be collectively owned.

Today, on the other hand, it is nothing but cynical exploitation – at least in the world of chart pop, where the ability of the overpaid, middle-aged, middle-class living in Somerset to write cutting-edge pop and R&B seems to be waning. Do you remember one good cover song by anyone from the reality TV “I can’t believe it’s worse than Eurovision” shows? That’s because there weren’t any. Gareth Gates doing his painfully-PC Spirit in the Sky, or Will Young, on Light My Fire, sounding about as inspiring as if the Hamiltons presented a sex education video? Do me a favour.

So what makes a good cover? As sure and as long as there is a market for ignorant or naïve folk to buy terrible music, there will be a secret society for those confident enough to seek it out – real artists, playing real music – even writing their own songs and playing their own instruments and everything! Sorry, I’ve slipped back into bitter cynicism again – but you get my point. To that tune, as it were, while there are original artists on this planet, there will be bands putting an original spin on an old classic and making it their own. Likewise, there will be much-respected musicians making howling misjudgements and savaging a great song to the embarrassment of everyone within earshot.

A good cover song is one which is significantly different to the original as to offer a new perspective or give the covering artist, while taking care – and this is important – not to defile the original or compromise the culture surrounding it. Which, it must be said, is a bloody difficult, not to mention daunting, thing to do. How do you take a masterpiece, give it your own stamp but retain the essence of the original (I should mention at this juncture that it was much more difficult to find a starting ten for the ‘best’ column than ‘worst’ or indeed, ‘most pointless’).

Thus, it is much easier to make a terrible cover, and perhaps easiest of all to make a bland, meaningless carbon copy. For instance, what is the point of covers bands? Scores of Oasis and Stone Roses mimics sprung up after the initial euphoria of two of Britain’s biggest bands had died down. The ultimate in entertainment parasites, these bands seek to profit, entirely in many cases, from material completely of another’s making. What are they saying, exactly? “We’re not original enough to write anything of our own, so we’re going to steal someone else’s ideas”? I appreciate some of them do it for the love of their heroes, but anyone who does this for profit should take their place in Music Hell, alongside Steps, Simon Cowell and The Osmonds.

A cynic I may be, but I maintain a faith in the music industry and its future that stubbornly defies reason. Already irate at the proportion of parasites in the charts, I felt too many lists of the ultimate cover songs failed to cover all bases. So, after lengthy consultation with many friends, musicians and fellow professionals (well, a few of us pontificating in a pub, wannabe singers and record label dogsbodies among our number), I have compiled what I believe to be a definitive list.

Or, as it is, three lists – the Top 10 Best, Worst and Most Soul-Sappingly Pointless Cover Songs of all time. Here they are, complete with individual tenuous explanation.


Pete Wilding





So what do you think of what you've just read? Please write and tell us!