I have never liked Sheryl Crow’s music. She has always seemed to epitomize everything that is wrong with FM these days. She’s bland, clever, and has a pretty voice, a perfect recipe for success in the pop music market. Every single she put out had the same effect on me, until “The First Cut is the Deepest” came out. It’s one hell of a song, even with her performing it. I knew it was a cover, I had seen the song listed on a Rod Stewart Best of compilation, but I had never heard his version before. Coming back from Beijing, I was listening to some of the in flight music on the Emirates flight back to Dubai and heard the Rod Stewart version. Incidentally, whoever does their programming has amazing taste. “James Brown live at the Apollo”, The Clash’s first album, “Hot buttered Soul” from Isaac Hayes, and even Blue Cheer’s first album are among the things I’ve heard on their flights. Better than any radio station I’ve ever heard. Anyway, the DJ mentioned that Rod Stewart’s version was a cover of the Cat Stevens song. Now I was intrigued, the Rod Stewart version is markedly superior to Ms. Crow’s version and I was curious to see what Cat Stevens had in mind when he penned the song. Cat Stevens (or Jusef Islam nowadays) has always been a prime candidate for covers. He was one heck of a song writer, but he has always had a weak singing voice and odd phrasing. Sure enough, his version of the song shows all of his regular hallmarks. It starts off well enough, just him an an acoustic guitar, but the producers quickly resorted to all of the 70’s tricks for compensating for a singer with no range and a weak voice. Lots of strings, horns, and double tracking (the singer is recored twice and played at the same time to add body to the voice) make for the typically overproduced 70’s pop recordings. Later in his career, Jusef got away from some of those things and adopted a style that was better suited for his voice, “Moonshadow” and “Peace Train” are two good examples of him at his best.
Rod Stewart corrected the really strange phrasing that Jusef used and added a voice with some depth of emotion and frankly, some interest. Rod Stewart used to be one hell of a rock and roll singer, disco really brought him down and he’s never fully recovered from “If you Think I’m Sexy” and “Hot Legs”. Listen to him with the Faces and you’ll know why he’s stuck around so long… He doesn’t have a classic great voice, but at his best he can ache, and he can keep the listener’s attention and interest. Yes, there are some strings in there, but they are much more subdued and are clearly a backing element as compared to the Stevens version. Rod did a remarkable job with “The First cut…” In my mind it is clearly the best version out there. Sheryl Crow simply switched a few pronouns, added a prettier voice, and leached out a lot of the angst while simply taking Stewart’s phrasing. Rod Stewart showed what can be accomplished with a good cover, and Sheryl Crow demonstrated what not to do. When done well, you can take a well written song and wring every ounce of whatever it has in it. When you do it well, no one can really imagine the song sung any different way. That’s why the Crow and Stewart song sound so similar, Rod Stewart nailed it, there really isn’t a better way to do it. After the comparison, I am more convinced than ever that Sheryl Crow is a talentless hack.
When I was downloading the two versions of the song for comparison, I remembered another pair of songs that I wanted to compare. “Another Saturday Night” by Sam Cooke is one of my favorite songs of all time. Cat Stevens covered it and it seems like he gets much more airplay these days. Comparing the two solidified my opinion, Sam Cooke’s version towers over Cat’s. Really, if you are going to cover a song, you shouldn’t try a song that was popularized by someone of Sam Cooke’s talent. He had almost perfect phrasing, and a voice that could melt butter. I could listen to his album “Night Moves” all day despite the mediocre writing quality of most of the songs, he’s that good. In short, people like Cat Stevens produce perfect cover material. Only a fool would cover performers like Sinatra, Cooke, Otis Redding, and Janis Joplin. They put too indelible a mark on the songs they did to be improved upon. Curiously, Dylan covers have not fared too well (IMO) despite the bad reputation of his voice. Notable exceptions are of course Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower”, and a cover of “Just Like a Woman” done by Roberta Flack of all people. Most of the covers of his songs that had chart success suffer in comparison to their original. “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “The Mighty Quinn,” “It ain’t Me,” “Love is a Four Letter Word,” etc are all watered down versions of the original.
Good covers are helpful and useful, they uncover what a song really has in it and turns a mediocre product into a great one. Bad, or merely competent covers are little more than pathetic. At best, they are an homage to the original. At worst they highlight the inadequacies of the performer. Cat Stevens and Sheryl Crow should stick with original material IMO….
2 replies on “Sheryl Crow, Cat Stevens, and the art of the cover”
Cat Stevens wrote and recorded “The First Cut is the Deepest” when he was 18 years old. (Amazing to think he wrote this when he was so young!) This was during his first success as a teenage popstar in England during the late 1960’s, and naturally his voice wasn’t as strong at that time since he was so young. The producer he had at that time liked big production and Cat has said he did not care for the production on those 60’s albums, but he really had no say at that time in how they were produced. In late 1968 or early 1969, Cat contracted TB and had to be out of the limelight for a year. When he had recovered and came back he found a new record company (Island) and a new producer (Paul Samwell-Smith) and that is when he wrote and recorded those beautiful early 70’s albums. He had had alot of time to think and write during his recuperation, and the result were those amazing songs of the early 70’s.
I beg to differ on the quality of Cat’s voice. I think he has an amazing and very unique voice. The phrasing and unusual time signatures are his trademark. He heard alot of Greek music in his childhood since his father was Greek Cypriot and he was influenced by that. I think his voice is very strong and has a very soothing quality to it. If you have never heard any of his songs except those played on the radio, do yourself a favor and listen to some of his albums. He didn’t just sing ballads. “O Caritas”, “Rubylove” (very Greek influenced), “Bitterblue”, “Tuesday’s Dead” – oh, there are too many to list here – are all great and strongly sung.
Did you know he has a new album out? It’s called “An Other Cup” and it’s great.
I didn’t realize how young he was when he recorded that song, but I think my comments pretty much jibe with what you describe as his reaction to the song. People always disagree about songs and voices, I really could never consider Jusef’s voice to be very strong, and he’s never had any range to speak of. Many people don’t have much range (Sinatra in the later years for example) but they make up for it in other ways, ways in which Jusef doesn’t. I’ve never found Jusef’s phrasing interesting or pleasing. On a couple songs I’ve heard he does an OK job, but I stand by my opinion that his greatest strength is his writing. To be fair, I really dislike that era and type (insightful singer songwriter in the mid to late 70’s) of music, so I’m not really excited to explore it too much. I didn’t realize that he had another album out. I thought that he quit recording when he converted.