I think I mentioned in a post a few years ago how I usually don't like covers because it's very rare that it ends up being better than the original. That being said, there are some situations when covers take a song to the next, much more sublime level. One of those cases is when an artist covers themselves (as in, they record and/or perform a song of theirs in a reworked, new style) and the other one is when a musician writes a song, sells it to someone else but records it himself as well.
Though I am not really a fan of her latest work, there are quite a lot of Madonna songs (especially from the 90s) that I like and listen to from time to time (mostly when they're on the radio) and Don't Tell Me has always been one of them. The story behind it is quite interesting: Joe Henry wrote and recorded the song Stop and then sent it to Madonna, who also recorded it (after some alterations, of course). It wasn't after a few weeks ago that I discovered the original version (confession: I was sitting at Starbucks, heard the song and I knew I had to have it...) and I can't get enough of it. But is it really a cover? After all, he wrote it, he recorded it first... but then again, it came out a year after the Madonna version... Does it even matter? This cover/original/call it whatever you want version of Don't Tell Me is much better (or at least according to my musical taste), much more sensual and - as I said before - simply sublime.
No comments:
Post a Comment