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Covers Better Than The Original

#646
This is Rod Stewart's cover of an old Cat Stevens song. In my opinion, this is likely the version that Sheryl Crow covered. Her version was great back in the day, but now it sounds derivative.

Hearing Rod's version was refreshing. I had never been a fan. When he tries to rock things up, stuff gets stinky fast and makes me grit my teeth wondering when classic rock will ever fade from the in-store Muzak(tm) rotation.

My opinion of Stewart went way up after hearing this cover. Sure, it's dated, but kind of timeless as well. When's the last time you heard a harp unless you were listening to Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano? I thought so.

That hoot at 3:28 is perfect. Non-verbal singing is awesome. My inner nerd enjoys the thought that when the vocals are thickened at 3:31, that's probably double tracking rather than a splitter -- although I don't know what need there could have been to thicken his rich, hoarse voice.

There is self-evidently no click track happening in the studio. A broken heart doesn't beat to a click.

 
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#647
There's a group called, The Cocktail Slippers, that did a version of an old Connie Francis song called, " Don't Ever Leave Me " that I think is miles above Connie's version of the Cynthia Weil written song.
 
#648
Don’t write off Rod just yet. He can howl the blues with the best of them when he wants to and he is up in age yet Ol Rod is still looking and sounding good and he is in his seventies. Doesn’t that alone say a lot about his talent? I saw him live a couple years ago and he covered his whole genre and repertoire going as far back as the small faces. Great show and amazingly he still has “it”. I’m not a fan of his disco era but overall he’s worthy of the hall of fame. For sure in my opinion.
 
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#651
Matthew Fisher said:
This is Rod Stewart's cover of an old Cat Stevens song. In my opinion, this is likely the version that Sheryl Crow covered. Her version was great back in the day, but now it sounds derivative.

Hearing Rod's version was refreshing. I had never been a fan. When he tries to rock things up, stuff gets stinky fast and makes me grit my teeth wondering when classic rock will ever fade from the in-store Muzak(tm) rotation.

My opinion of Stewart went way up after hearing this cover. Sure, it's dated, but kind of timeless as well. When's the last time you heard a harp unless you were listening to Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano? I thought so.

That hoot at 3:28 is perfect. Non-verbal singing is awesome. My inner nerd enjoys the thought that when the vocals are thickened at 3:31, that's probably double tracking rather than a splitter -- although I don't know what need there could have been to thicken his rich, hoarse voice.

There is self-evidently no click track happening in the studio. A broken heart doesn't beat to a click.

Click to expand...

Rod was just chasing after this...

The harp bit was already there; otherwise, I guess you’ve never heard Joanna Newsom or Florence and the Machine. Arnold was a former Ikette who decided to stay in Britain and had a long career as a soloist and back-up vocalist. She’s the icing on the cake on this epic track...

Keith Emerson’s original group of note, The Nice, came together initially as her backing band.
 
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