'Be My Baby' by the Ronettes is one of those songs, that if you don't like, I can never be friends with you. It's a prime example of a song that has a 'Be My Baby'-intro (you know, dum dum-dum TSSSH dum dum-dum TSSSH). It's been covered by everyone, from John Lennon to We Are Scientists to Maroon 5 to Whigfield (!). None of those covers are particularly good, but why try and improve on perfection? The only possible way I'd even consider listening to someone that isn't the Ronettes sing 'Be My Baby', would be if it was in a foreign language. Probably French, because 60s pop songs always sound good when covered in French. Of course, regrettably, that'll never happ...
Thanks, Mod-ified Music. Your site rules.
Next dance party I throw will totally be a ye-ye barnstormer.
Reviens Vite Et Oublie
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
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do you have any of the ultra chicks comps, samir? those serve up some really hot ye-ye stuff. nice blog!
Vanessa Paradis did a really good cover of Be My Baby. Not in French though, though in retrospect maybe it should have been.
Covers are a difficult breed about which I have mixed feelings.There are some truly poor covers out there, generally anything off a soundtrack that is specifically covers of a particular band or artist (I'm looking at you "I Am Sam") are terrible. Why? because songs on soundtracks like that generally go add anything to the original. That's what a good cover does, it adds something to the original.
I think an obvious analog are movies that are adapted from musicals. The (more like A) reason that Rent rings hallow for me was that it was an unimaginative interpretation of the musical. There wasn't anything in that movie that I didn't glean from the musical.
Back on point, foreign covers of popular tracks are generally interesting because there's a built in newness to them simply by being done in a different language. So this cover is at least interesting, as is the Paint it Black cover on one of those Swinging Mdme. albums (for the same reason).
I think it's actually harder for a cover to be good when done by a musician doing the song in the same language as the original because you have to do something musically different. So to use a couple of popular examples Hendrix 'All Along the Watchtower' is something vastly different from Dylan's as is Jeff Buckley's cover of Hallelujah different from Cohen's.
Anyway...I'm all for a yeye house party. We could put up looping scenes from Danger Diabolik and Modest Blaise and that sort of thing...