More on the cover tunes...

inspired by the last post....
I've heard some people say that those note-for-note covers of songs are boring, but I don't agree with that. I think that even though they might be pretty faithful reproductions of the originals, even so the artists are in a way putting their own stamp on those songs. And it doesn't hurt that a lot of those covers sound really, really good (see: Alan Jackson's entire Under the Influence cd). On the other hand, an artist remaking the song with his or her own sound is a pretty dicey endeavor. Just for another example, taking that Waylon tribute cd, Metallica frontman James Hetfield's rocking cover of "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out Of Hand" ended up being my favorite song on that cd, but Deana Carter and Sara Evans' mushy middle-of-the-road Adult Contemporary rendering of "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" was just about the worst thing I'd ever heard. Worse than Shania Twain, worse than anything on Faith Hill's Breathe cd, worse than Rascal Flatts. Hell, it almost sounded like somethin' the Flatts boys might have done. I know this isn't the only choice, but if it came down to a choice between crap like that and a note-for-note cover, I'd take the latter any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Speaking of those covers, another of my favorites has always been Terri Clark's rendition of Linda Ronstadt's 1978 hit "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," which was on the radio as I was riding home from work. Another pretty faithful rendition of the original, but she still does it justice. I saw her sing it live when she was touring with George Strait in 1996; some of the scenes from that video were taken from footage shot on that tour. I always wondered if any of that footage was from Shreveport, Louisiana in February...