Bust This

Kate Bush is one of those who's a household name in England, yet can only manage a cult following in this country. Her 1985 song "Cloudbusting" is an absolute classic. It's vintage Bush -- with warbly vocals, esoteric lyrics (about Wilhelm Reich) and production via the Fairlight CMI synthesizer, a staple of the phenomenal Hounds of Love album and the state-of-the-art machine of its day. And consider this: "Cloudbusting" was the last track on Side 1, which also featured "Running Up That Hill" and "Hounds of Love". What a side!

Over the years, plenty of artists have gone back and mined Kate Bush to bust clouds of their own. Take Utah Saints -- the Leeds EDM duo sampled Bush's "Cloudbusting" vocals in the appropriately titled "Something Good" from 1992 (and did it again in 2008). That track never fails to put me in an upbeat mood. More recently, the Blacksburg, VA band Wild Nothing turned out a more traditional cover version of the song.

For whatever reason, a lot of Kate Bush songs have lent themselves to very strong cover versions. Like the Futureheads version of the aforementioned "Hounds of Love", and Placebo's version of "Running Up That Hill". And last year, Das Racist's Himanshu sampled "Suspended in Gaffa" for his track "Kate Boosh".

I've been a Kate Bush fan ever since hearing her otherworldly track "The Dreaming" for the first time when I was about 11 years old. I'm just glad her music lives on as new artists discover it.

Cover Me...Volume 4

A good cover song should spotlight the song in a different light.  A cover song is weakest when, say a band does the cover in the same vein as a predecessor.  Take "I Fought the Law"  - probably one of the most covered songs  in rock & roll.   Originally written by Sonny Curtis in 1959, it gained notoriety when the Bobby Fuller Trio covered it in 1966.  Thirteen years later, the song gained a second life when the Clash took it on and transformed it from a ballad of love lost, to an anti-establishment anthem.  In 2004, Green Day, the main stream punk, band decided to cover it, but did no justice to the song, playing it exactly like the Clash did in '79.  As stated in the movie Multiplicity,

"You know how when you make a copy of a copy, its not
  as sharp as... well... the original."

That is what happend to Green Day's version.

The Clash

 Green Day

Or maybe a country version suits you better: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

So for today's cover song, I chose Lionel Richie's "Hello" off his mulch-platinum album, Can't Slow Down.  The song is probably most famous for the video, with Richie stalking a blind girl, who reciprocates her love for him by creating a clay bust of his head. The song is sappy with it's iconic line "hello, is it me you're looking for..." and a smooth jazz guitar solo.

The cover is by punk rock super-group, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.  The Gimmes are nothing more than a cover band who wear quirky, matching outfits like Hawaiian shirts, or Western wear. or Nehru suits with a fez. They give a completely original take on the song until the end (which nearly ruins the song) when they close with the infamous Three Stooges "Hello." 

Cover Me...Volume 2

Let's compare cover versions to their original songs, and decide which one we like best.

For our second contest, we have the song "Raspberry Beret". Originally written and performed by Prince, the Hindu Love Gods (REM's side project with Warren Zevon) had a different take on it. 

So Prince is the original:

And the Hindu Love Gods cover five years later, with less lyrics:

Which do you prefer? For me, it's the cover - by a hair. The REM rhythm section along with the Peter Buck guitar riff is one of the coolest cover interpretations I have heard.  Gives it a different life to a different audience. 
 
If the answer is neither, perhaps you'll like the Big Smith bluegrass version.

Cover Me... Volume 1

Let's compare cover versions to their original songs, and decide which one we like best.

For the inaugural contest, we have the song "Girls Talk". Originally written and performed by Elvis Costello, it was made popular by pub rocker Dave Edmunds only to appear a year later as an Elvis B-side.

So Elvis Costello is the original:

And Dave Edmunds is the cover, despite being released a year earlier:

Which do you prefer? For me, it's the original Elvis Costello version, despite the cheeriness of the Edmunds version.Given the chord structure of that tune, it's hard to hear anyone else but Elvis sing it.
 
If the answer is neither, perhaps you'll like the Linda Ronstadt version:

(By the way, did you know "Queen of Hearts" -- the song that Juice Newton made famous in this country was originally a Dave Edmunds tune?)