Covers

In the shower this morning I managed to hear Placebo's cover of Kate Bush's timeless classic "Running Up that Hill". In my opinion it's pretty odious. It got me thinking about why bands choose the covers they do. Covering a well known song (and in international pop, there might not be a better known song than "Running...") seems to be done either as a tribute or as an implicit admission that you are out of original material and looking to score an easy hit (and there has been a lot of that lately). Covering obscure songs is a different matter.

Here are the bands that cover "Running up That Hill" and for which the song is available in the Itunes music store (I'm sure there are more): Placebo, Faith And The Muse, Re-Touch, Icon & The Black Roses, Danielle French, Jenna Myles, Elastik Band, Kiki & Herb, Visnadi, The Lund Clements Churchill Trio, Thomas Mery, The Baltimores, Kevin Slick, Dave Rummans, Isadar, Kenny Moran.

Most of these sound like fairly loving covers of the tribute variety. Few of these bands are ever going to make it big with Kate Bush's or any other material. The one by the Baltimores is not particularly respectful of the original song. The one by Icon & The Black Roses, which is a hard rock version, sounded the most interesting to me. Your mileage will of course vary.

The deal with this particular song is that the original is so amazingly good there's no way anyone could improve on it: