Cover Your Ears! 5 of my favourite off-the-wall covers and originals.

Every year during the Edinburgh festival, I am handed flyers by frazzled southerners advertising various renditions of plays by William Shakespear. Of course, this is all pretty well-trodden ground by now and so every year I see more and more wildly transformative adaptations of the classics, from Hamlet delivered in rap-battle format to Romeo and Juliet as a death-metal opera… on ice! It often makes me wonder how far you have to stray from the source material before you’ve accidentally invented something entirely new.

Plenty of covers make me think the same thing, there are songs I’ve listened to for years that I could never have guessed were not original, some that seemed to suit the covering artists style far more than the original. 

There’s also a certain thrill of finding an original version so obscure and unexpected that it makes you wonder how it ever came into existence. This list is going to focus on my favourite examples of this, we all know Johnny Cash didn’t write Hurt and Amy Winehouse didn’t write Valerie, here are some deep cuts that make you do the aural equivalent of a double take. In no particular order…

Grace Jones - Warm Leatherette

Everyone knows Grace Jones is a pioneer and she’s well-known for her covers, such as her sleazy disco flip of Flash & the Pan’s Walking in the Rain or Iggy Pop’s Nightclubbing. The title track of her 1980 album is actually a cover of a 1978 track by The Normal—a short-lived experimental synthy project of Mute Records founder Daniel Miller.

The Normal original: The Normal - Warm Leatherette

Who would have thought that Jones’ swaggering funk backing track and crooning vocals were an interpretation on a song with about as much musicality as a desktop printer duetting with a Dalek. Imagine my delight (and the bartenders’ despair) when I discovered that my local pub jukebox had both versions.

Suzy Andrews - Teenage Iceage

This is one that is probably much more interesting to me than most people but I’m including it anyway because it’s a very interesting interpretation. Eisbar by Grauzone is a bit of a cult-classic tune for fans of post-punk and obscure 80s European music, made popular by late Scottish DJ legend JD Twitch at his Optimo parties. It’s been a favourite of mine for years, it even played at my wedding, yes my parents were confused.

Grauzone original: Grauzone - Eisbaer

This year on my honeymoon in Athens after a couple of ouzos I asked an even more confused greek DJ what song was playing. He had no idea what I was on about and I actually had to take a photo of the spinning record to find out. The song was Tango 2000 by Suzy Andrews and it turns out the entire album is made up of covers of some description. The song Teenage Iceage is a version of Eisbar with most of the lyrics removed and the musical elements pared back to a sinister and somehow even icier sound. It wasn’t until the signature morse-code like beeps after the chorus that I realised what I was listening to.

Tears for Fears - Boy From School

This is a bit of a switcheroo one. The Hot Chip song was pretty popular when I was in High School, and so when I heard the Tears for Fears version I assumed it must have been the original, since Tears for Fears were around decades before Hot Chip. Little did I know, Tears for Fears had actually recorded various covers of their indie favourites at the time, like a fun electropop version of Animal Collective’s My Girls or a slower, ballad style rendition of Arcade Fire’s Ready to Start.

Hot Chip original: Hot Chip - Boy From School (Official Video) (HD)

I still think I prefer the original but this is a fun way to imagine what that song might have sounded like if it had been released 20 years prior. There’s also a great version by Grizzly Bear.

FMT feat Camilla - 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

I couldn’t tell you where I first heard this version of Paul Simon’s 1975 classic but for a long time, this was the only version I knew. The RnB Hip-Hop style fits so well with the lyrical content, and the interplay between the male and female vocals, that I had no reason to question whether or not it was the original.

Paul Simon original: Paul Simon - 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Official Audio)

Then, when I was about 15 and my drum teacher handed me the sheet music for Steve Gadd’s eye-wateringly difficult drum part, I told him there must be some mistake because I could play a hip-hop beat just fine, no need for any of these polyrhythms or paradiddles. He was just as confused as me as he played the original out of his iPod and asked me why in the hell I would think of playing an Amen Break over it. To this day I have never met someone who had heard FMT’s version before, or their equally cool version of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne.

José González - Heartbeats

Before the days of Shazam, this used to play in the coffee shop next to my first job every day. I always wondered what it was but never thought much of it. When I first heard The Knife’s version years later, I assumed it must have been a cover, but I wondered what would make an experimental synth-pop band cover some random acoustic coffee-shop playlist fodder.

The Knife original: The Knife - Heartbeats (Official Video)

Imagine my surprise when I looked it up and found it was the other way around! How did such a freaky band manage to pen such a secretly perfect acoustic campfire ballad? How did a singer-songwriter hear a song like that and manage to extract such a totally different interpretation from it? I guess we’ll never know.

Final Thoughts

Some musicians have a bit of a superpower where they can totally transform an original song’s sound by messing around with different harmonies, rhythm and arrangement. Sometimes for worst, most of the time for the better, but either way, the best thing about learning theory is how we are able to use it to its full potential and unlock an entire new musical idea to an already existing one.

Understanding how each musical element work with one another creates a new perspective in achieving a certain goal and/or message, whether it might be turning a happy song into a sad one (or vice versa), or turning up a soft song into a loud, anthemic track. Music never had any bounds in the first place and it’s always up to us to find the sound that truly resonates with us.

If you’re interested in diving into the world of covering songs yourself, we’ve got a handy starter pack for our Cover Artist Guitar Pathway here.

Let us know what other songs you didn’t know were covers! Have you got a favourite cover? What’s the song you know the most different versions of? Drop a comment below and share your ideas!

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