Kriston was playing The Vaselines this morning, which reminded me that though I like "Jesus Don't Want Me For a Sunbeam," "Molly's Lips,"and (especiallly) "Son of a Gun" that in all three instances I think the Nirvana cover (the former on Unplugged the latter two on Incesticide) is superior to the original and this also strikes me as a crappy opinion to have. Even worse, as a general matter, I tend to really prefer Vaselines-style bands with woman singers. Now and again, I'll try to convince myself that this is wrong I really do like the more authentic originals better, but it's just not true, damnit. At the end of the day, I just really, really, really like Nirvana, which also seems like a pretty lame view to me.
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The Perils of Authenticity
20 Nov 2006 11:11 am
Comments (78)
At the end of the day, I just really, really, really like Nirvana, which also seems like a pretty lame view to me.
????!!!
Why in the world would really liking Nirvana be pretty lame?
Liking Nirvana is lame? Sounds like you are trying to hard too impress the other indy rock snobs. I'll tell you a little secret - not only is Nirvana not lame, but Rush is actually a much better band than Sebadoh, Modest Mouse, or even Pavement. Yes, it's true. But on the other hand the Minutemen were much better than Rush.
Not so lame to really like Nirvana as long as you don't try to sing/dress/marry like Cobain. It is pretty lame to like their covers better than the Vaselines' originals, though.
The first time I truly fell in love with Nirvana, as opposed to enjoying Nevermind, was when I heard those Vaselines covers on Incesticide. Hold your head, Yglesias: their "Molly's Lips" is much better than the original, but "Son of a Gun" is a very close call.
Nirvana's "Man Who Sold the World" is definitely better than Bowie's version.
Its also lame to compare Rush to Pavement.
I fail to understand the big deal about authenticity. Inauthenticity is the American way. Thursday we celebrate the Pilgrims' attempt to cover Calvin's Geneva.
I actually think it's lame to mention Rush on any blog post unless your name is The Editors.
FWIW: Woman talking to dinner companion, overheard in a DC restaurant some years ago [in a tone of disbelieving, friendly condescension]: He likes Nirvana. It's was so *cute*!
Worrying about one's aesthetic decisions is a dead end.
Why is a song by the original band more "authentic" than the cover?
I thought Nirvana was one of those bands that both indie music kids and the music-proles they (we?) love to despise could embrace. Like the Beatles. There's nothing uncool about thinking that the Beatles were amazing, though of course to hew to the Party line one has to believe that Revolver is their best album.
Um. Rush is not better than Modest Mouse or Pavement. That's crazy. Rush is certainly not bad, but aside from a few songs, they certainly aren't great. Pavement, however, was great and Modest Mouse is very, very good.
Ultimately, however, we all like what we like and that's that. We can all invent reasons to explain why we like what we like, but those rationalizations are pretty weak brew. Far better to just own up to your preferences without apology.
Krist Noveselic is playing bass on tour with Flipper. Pretty rad if you ask me.
"I'll tell you a little secret - not only is Nirvana not lame, but Rush is actually a much better band than Sebadoh, Modest Mouse, or even Pavement."
Rush might be better than Sebadoh. I haven't listened to that much Modest Mouse, so I'll suspend judgment on that one. But that last clause is what got me. It is, quite simply, insane. Pavement is, for my money, the best band of the 90s. Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain are better than anything Rush ever made.
I think there's one important thing here that some people may miss - Matthew is, what, 25 years old? He can't possibly know what it was like in 1990 to all of a sudden hear Nirvana and Soundgarden and Mudhoney and Alice in Chains for the first time, after hearing pop music for the entire decade of the '80s. A lot of my thoughts about Nirvana are caught up in what the experience of a completely new type of sound was like - how much they changed my musical tastes. That's something affects old-timers like me but not young people like Matthew.
I used to feel guilty about liking Cheap Trick. But I eventually came out of the closet in that regard and it was an immense relief.
And so now I can shout it from the rooftops ev ry sin gle night: I dig Cheap Trick.
Bleach is tite.
Mitigating factors: A) Nirvana had a real knack for a good cover; and B) the Vaselines are overrated. I'll take the other twee/C86 bands like Flatmates, Shop Assistants or Tallulah Gosh long before the Vaselines.
"...I think the Nirvana cover (the former on Unplugged the latter two on Incesticide) is superior to the original..."
Me too. Since, as self-appointed Pope of Indie Rock, my opinions on popular music are infallible when spoken "ex cathedra," I pronounce that the Vaselines were/are highly overrated. IMIO*, the Moldy Peaches did the "giggly-kids with guitars" concept infinitely better.
(*IMIO-In My Infallible Opinion.)
Flatmates? Shop Assistants? Tallulah Gosh?
I shed real tears when I think what a stupid haircut I had in 1986. Let us raise a glass to the unjustly forgotten "We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It," and to the sad fact that I have very little hair to cut at all these days.
Modest Mouse is worse than Rush, and Rush is awful. (Pavement is far better than both though they haven't aged well.) They're both terrible bands. The Vaselines were alright but Nirvana's versions of their songs were simply much better. Anyone who says otherwise is probably an indy rock poseur, which is a sad thing to be.
There's the music you like, and because you like it you call it good. And then there's the music you should like, and because you should like it you call it good.
Nirvana and the Vaselines. It happens to everyone, man. For me it was The Doors and The Beatles. Don't sweat it.
Al's right, and I'll take it a step further: I'd say the early 90s grunge period (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, etc.) coupled with bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots represented the apogee of American rock in at least the past twenty-five years.
I'm also 25, but I think just about all of what passes as "indie" these days frankly sucks. None of it seems very creative. Where are the great guitarists, drummers, and bassists? Where are the ambitious albums? Kick-ass vocals?
That's why about the only band in its "prime", if you don't count Beck, I listen to is The White Stripes. Everything else is almost laughably bad by comparison.
Kriston, Bowie's version of "The Man Who Sold the World" is better though generally I agree that Nirvana does great covers; look what they did to the Meat Puppets for christ sake.
"Worrying about one's aesthetic decisions is a dead end."
Unless you enjoy doing it for its own sake.
I'm also 25, but I think just about all of what passes as "indie" these days frankly sucks. None of it seems very creative. Where are the great guitarists, drummers, and bassists? Where are the ambitious albums? Kick-ass vocals?
Radiohead?
Radiohead is great, but let's face it: they haven't put out a decent album since 2000 (Kid A) or an excellent one since 1997 (OK Computer).
Thats fair although I thought Hail to the Theif was a very good album.
The Arcade Fire is also another example. I'm interested to hear where they go next.
Not to overstate the obvious, but it's OK to like whatever you like. Ain't no shame in having preferences, de gustibus non est disputandum and all that.
For the record, I like the original of "Son of a Gun" better, but I prefer the Nirvana covers of the other two.
You're wrong about your shame on both counts. Nirvana's versions of every song they cover on record (including Unplugged) are better than the originals. And beyond that, Unplugged is the greatest live rock record ever made -- the only way it could be better is if they finally released a DVD of the whole set. That look and that sigh before the ending "laaaaaaaaast night" in "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" are simply chilling.
And this reminds me that Alice in Chains' Unplugged is surprisingly underappreciated by many people whom I suspect otherwise appreciate Alice in Chains.
children, children: there was plenty of great music in the '20s, the '30s, the '40s, the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, and now. sometimes we live in a period when great music is also popular music and sometimes we don't, but there are always people producing interesting, arresting, catchy stuff.
so it's amusing for me to see, for instance, someone like Al think that Nirvana, when they came along, were something new and different, because speaking as an old-timer, when Nirvana came along, what i said to a friend was "i guess this is the band that's going to make husker du's sound popular." which i meant as a compliment, btw.
speaking of btw, charlie, hippies liked both dylan and hendrix, and i want to compliment msb: there is no reason to privilege the "original" version of a song....
I always have to bring Rush into these discussions because mentioning Rush is like waving a red cape to indy rock snobs. Indy snobs feel compelled to denounce Rush to establish their credibility, even though the members of Rush are demonstrably excellent musicians who have always shown a willingness to experiment, and are about as far out of the mainstream as you can get these days. Rush's flaws are pretty manifest and obvious as well - pretentiousness, lack of sex appeal, an annoying vocalist who doesn't sing all that well, and music that is a little too coldly intellectual with no danceability or funk to it at all. But ironically those are essentially the same flaws that Pavement and Modest Mouse share, in differing degrees. But in the end you have to decide yourself - are you going to judge music on its own terms or by your desire to think of yourself as cool?
When I first heard Nirvana, my immediate reaction was "This sounds just like one of these crappy punk bands I used to see in scummy little bars in high school" (I'm old). Then I finally heard their big album all the way through on the radio, and liked it enough to go out and buy it, when I was in a small town in ESL-land, where you had a very limited choice of Western CDs to buy. But what mainly made it good was the production, I think, in addition to clever "songwriting" and a bitchen drummer. And Cobain killing himself made them better, of course. But the unplugged thing doesn't benefit from the good production part.
there was plenty of great music in the '20s, the '30s, the '40s, the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, and now
Jeez, Howard, the '20s??? I heard that Mozart guy was pretty good too.
Having indy rock cred is dumb. Real music snobs laugh and laugh at the idea of distinguishing between a bunch of soundalike bands with wacky instrumentation, and real indy snobs would never listen to something like Modest Mouse because they're too popular. Indy rock cred is an arms race in which everyone loses.
Worrying about one's aesthetic decisions is a dead end.
Not just "One" but Achtung, Baby and everything else by U2.
Why do you have to automatically prefer the original and consider it lame to like a cover better? Some people are better songwriters than performers, so by default a great perfomer is going to come along and make their stuff better (ever hear the orginal version of City of New Orleans? I'd argue that just about every cover is better!). Some performers turn anything they do into something distinctive (Willie Nelson being a great example, there are a lot of songs that I only like if he is doing them).
I like Nirvana's covers of several songs on unplugged better than the orginals.
As someone else noted sometimes a cover is so different that it and the orignal are both great, Dylan and Hendrix being a good example.
"Jeez, Howard, the '20s??? I heard that Mozart guy was pretty good too."
I don't know. I've only heard covers of his stuff.
There's nothing wrong with like Nirvana. In fact, I'm a little troubled by my lack of enthusiasm for them -- I recognize them as great, but don't really find myself wanting to listen to them.
There's nothing wrong with liking a cover better, either. Some acts are better songwriters than performers. Consider "All Along the Watchtower". Or any number of John Hiatt songs (I tend to prefer the Hiatt originals, but that's a minority opinion).
My roommate is fond of citing Rush as the band with the all-time highest ratio of musical talent:endurability. Their just abysmal -- so bad that they pretty much ruined Sleater Kinney for me due to the vocals' occasional similarity to Geddy Lee.
Inauthenticity is the American way. Thursday we celebrate the Pilgrims' attempt to cover Calvin's Geneva.
ROTFLMLWAO. Awesome comment.
"I'd say the early 90s grunge period (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, etc.) coupled with bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots represented the apogee of American rock in at least the past twenty-five years."
Three words: Appetite. For. Destruction.
I am always amazed that anyone thinks the original recording of a song by its composer is somehow more authentic or better than a cover. I think this attitude came with the Beatles, whose combination of songwriting ability and quality performance made it seem natural. But songwriting and performance are different kinds of creativity, and having the ability to do both well is pretty rare. I think a cult of authenticity in pop music came about in the '60s, a reaction perhaps to earlier commercial contrivances.
But seriously--look at jazz or country or early rock or pop standards from the 20s to the 40s. There often isn't a definitive version of a song--just different interpretations. And the best covers bring something special to a song.
I think the idea that one's performance of one's own songs are the best, most authentic version has an economic basis. Doing a cover costs money--you have to pay royalties to some other songwriter. When you are dealing with indy bands who are not exactly flush in the first place, it just makes more sense to produce albums full of originals. But it's often an artistic mistake--a lot of albums by really good bands end up having one or two or three songs that are good and a bunch of mediocre filler. Maybe if, instead of foisting songs that probably shouldn't have seen the light of day on their fans, bands replaced them with interesting, well-chosen covers, they'd make better albums. (Then again, in this iPod world, maybe the whole idea of the album has outlived its purpose.)
I think one mark of a great song is whether or not it can be successfully covered. I loved Pavement, but I'd be very interested to see what "Embassy Row" sounds like done by someone else. I never thought Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" was a great song until I heard Dwight Yoakum's version, for example.
For what it's worth, a lot of great Brazilian songwriters seem to have no ego when it comes to cover songs. Any given Caetano Veloso or Gilberto Gil or Rita Lee album is likely to have numerous covers, along with their own typically excellent originals.
RWB is 100% right and I'd go so far as to say that where there's an unbreakable tie between song and performer, both will usually suck. There are honorable exceptions— Thelonious Monk was the only one who could play some of his compositions— but generally that tie is just an economic artifact that hasn't existed for even the history of most recorded music, leave alone music generally.
Who cares if the hipster gods think its "lame"? You like Nirvana. Don't fret, just enjoy it. And I agree, their cover of "Jesus.." is fucking awesome.
Nirvana's "Man Who Sold the World" is definitely better than Bowie's version.
Easy now.
There's no shame in preferring the cover version to an original. A number of Dylan songs I prefer the cover to the original; I think he said himself he preferred Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower".
As to Nirvana, I actually like their versions of the Vaselines better as well. In the other direction, the original versions of "Love Buzz" and "D-7" are to my mind much better than Nirvana's take.
It's not wholly unexpected that covers would often be better than the originals. Releasing too many covers reduces a band's own songwriting cachet. So, a band isn't going to release a cover unless they really believe they've jazzed it up enough to merit a spot on their album. In practice, this means combining an excellent song with an excellent performance of it. The bar is set much lower for a band's own songs, when simply writing one is good enough to release it.
Stone Temple Pilots were not, at the time, widely accepted as a peer of even Pearl Jam (who they were viewed as a knock off of), let alone Nirvana. Only someone reviewing the era in hindsight would even mention them in the same breath.
And, to the comment "look what they did to the Meat Puppets for christ sake" -- um, the Meat Puppets actually joined Nirvana to perform those songs, so they weren't covers - they were a chance for mainstream America to hear the Puppets.
ever hear the orginal version of City of New Orleans? I'd argue that just about every cover is better!
This is just insane. The original is understated but far better than, say, the Arlo Guthrie cover.
I'm going to assume you don't have any problem preferring Nirvana's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" to Led Belly's original.
Authenticity went out with the existentialists.
nirvana is great, but really depressing.
looking back at it, grunge just kind of seems stupid, like the hippie movement.
the grunge movement got a little too full of itself. it didn't know how to laugh at itself. it took itself way too serious.
i love cheap trick, and have no problems admitting it.
Pimp C is better than Elvis, but it is pretty close between Roy Orbison and Lil' Wayne.
the Vaselines, like Neil Young and Dylan, are best covered, and not heard in the original.
Three words: Appetite. For. Destruction.
have you heard it recently ?
my wife just grabbed that off iTunes this weekend and i was all like "oh yeah! SWEET!" and then i heard it... ugh, the lyrics are FUCKING LAME, the music is homogenized Aerosmith. ugh. it's really really sad. Nirvana sooo did the world a favor, when they pushed that crap out of the way.
cleek: Yes, Appetite is still in my rotation of albums I listen to at least once a month. If that's your opinion of it, we really don't have any common ground. I know -- maybe you didn't have it on loud enough? Because it really sounds nothing like Aerosmith, either the old or "new."
Appetite For Destruction is lame and Dylan is best heard as covered by others? Where are these people grown?
the Vaselines, like Neil Young and Dylan, are best covered, and not heard in the original.
Leonard Cohen is also like this - best covered rather than heard in the original (Jeff Buckley's "Halleljuah", Concrete Blonde's "Everybody Knows", covers of "Bird on a Wire" by Johnny Cash and Joe Cocker...)
The consensus here seems to be: there is nothing wrong with covers; why assume an original will be better?
I'll take the other side of this. There is nothing inherently wrong with covering a song, and no reason that a cover must suffer by comparison. But so many covers fail that we have the uneasy feeling about them that Matt is voicing.
Why? Here are a few guesses:
1. Often, covers are so faithful to the original that we wonder why they are created. It's not so much that the song is worse, just that the effort seems pointless somehow.
2. Songs are often covered by an artist trying to increase the "pop" quotient of a good but marginally popular song in an attempt to cash in, robbing the song of an edge that made it special. I'm thinking of things like Rod Stewart's pleasant but soulless rendition of Downtown Train.
3. Songs are covered in an attempt to move them from one genre to another. While the song may be as good, the people that originally liked it are less friendly to the newer version for reasons of broader stylistic preferences.
4. Sometimes, the original performer really is that difficult to match. I'm sure I've heard dozens of covers of Marvin Gaye's songs off of What's Going On, but few performers can match him.
The truth is, too many artists don't bring a lot to the table to distinguish themselves from their source.
Leonard Cohen is also like this - best covered rather than heard in the original ... Concrete Blonde's "Everybody Knows"
Wow. Couldn't disagree more on this choice. Cohen has spawned many great covers (I love the Pixies doing I Can't Forget), but I thought his version had such a deep sense of cynicism and personal regret that CB's version didn't even touch. To me, this would be a good example of a song that lost its edge when it was covered.
Probably the best cover I've heard in recent years is The Concretes' rendition of the Stones' "Miss You." The whole mood of the song is dramatically shifted.
Al, Al: you mean you can't appreciate Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five, Hot Seven, and in duet with Earl Hines? Jimmie Rodgers? Sidney Bechet? the Walter Page Blue Devils? the Carter Family? Lonnie Johnson? early Duke Ellington?
one could go on....
PS. those mozart covers are pretty damn good, aren't they?
The truth is, too many artists don't bring a lot to the table to distinguish themselves from their source.
when i was in college, I was in a bunch of bands. we did mostly originals, except for a handful of covers that we chose because we loved the songs and wanted to play them - mostly obscure things. i have no idea what people assumed our reasons were for choosing them. the woman who is now my wife was in a bunch of cover bands at the same time, and they chose their songs for the similar reasons.
but, while my bands made our covers song like our original songs (we had no choice - we weren't technically competent enough to copy them faithfully), my wife's bands would try to duplicate them. and so, her bands were much more popular. some people really want to hear familiar songs played as close to the original as possible - at least live.
no point.
and no, i'll say it again... GnR have not aged well.
(sorry for all the typos - need a nap)
some people really want to hear familiar songs played as close to the original as possible - at least live.
This is very, very true for live music.
I got nothing against cover bands or tribute bands. To an extent, I think there is something fun and cool in band trying to recreate a live experience that many people never had. Additionally, most cover bands play in smallish clubs, so that brings a new aspect to the experience for many in the audience.
It's odd that anyone would even take a position that covers are bad (or good). Most musicians play covers at some point in their careers and there are hundreds of examples of great covers - the Who playing "Young Man Blues", the Clash "I fought the Law", Devo "satisfaction", Talking Heads "Take me to the River", and on and on. And Nirvana did a great job covering Bowie. I think Matt's original post was not so much about the inherent value of covers, but the fact that when the original artist is more indie/less popular than the band covering them you're supposed to prefer the original, regardless, apparently, of musical merit.
From a Pitchfork Media article:
"If you say you don't like Nirvana, you're just trying to be cool, and you aren't trying hard enough."
Rufus Wainright does an amazing version of "Everybody Knows". It's rhumba!
I've never even heard a reason not to like Nirvana. Can someone explain without dismissing it as an attempt to build snob cred? I stopped liking white men with guitars for eight years after Kurt Cobain died. Totally skipped Pavement.
You love The Decemberists, which is even a crappier opinion to have :)
Can someone explain without dismissing it as an attempt to build snob cred? I stopped liking white men with guitars for eight years after Kurt Cobain died. Totally skipped Pavement.
De gustibus non est disputandum. Why does anyone have to like anything?
There are a handful of Nirvana songs I really like, but the bulk of their catalog leaves me cold; it is dour, three-chord rock. Give me the Pixies any day.
Pavement, btw, had released their first two (highly regarded) albums by '94 :-)
Nirvana was good for what they were doing, but there is just too much other stuff that's far too much better to ever have time to listen to those records, and that's from someone to whom they were the introduction, basically, to the world of music that isn't product.
I often pick up your musical picks, Matt, because I need some outlet to turn me onto new music. But frankly, you take your music too seriously. I take your music criticism with a grain of salt. But then, I take all music criticism with a grain of salt.
I'm frankly, not really that enamored of any of Nirvana's covers, thinking that many of their originals are far far superior. What always bugged me about Nirvana was the unbelievable awfulness of their live show. Easily one of the worst shows I've ever seen.
You have not experienced Nirvana until you have listened to them in the original Klingon.
Nothing gets a thread going like a debate over musical tastes!
Never was much of a Nirvana fan (speaking of snobs, can you get any more elitist than Kurt Cobain? Guy wrote a song about how upset he was that rednecks liked his music!), but thanks, Matt, for introducing me to the Vaselines! Read this post, bounced to the Wikipedia article, headed over to YouTube, found 'em there.
I've heard "Molly's Lips" somewhere once before, probably on WRNR in Annapolis (the true WHFS, still playing!), and it definitely wasn't Cobain singing, so I assume it was the Vaselines. Their album just made my Christmas list.
I think it's safe to say that in most cases, the original version is usually better than a cover simply because -it's more original-. But there are always special cases where the covering band, like Nirvana in this case, does something pretty amazing with the original song and creates something completely different - despite having the same lyrics and basic music. Other cases in point are Low's cover of Joy Division's Transmission and Jose Gonzalez's cover of the Knife's Heartbeats: it's not necessarily that one is better than the other, but they kind of serve different listening purposes.
And just a little defense of the Vaselines: Kurt Cobain is on record as having been blown away when he first heard them, and it's pretty clear that they and bands like them heavily influenced Nirvana. They exemplified the DIY ethic (they really didn't know how to play their instruments) that later characterized grunge (but in a corporately produced sort of way) much earlier and better than today's corporate indie (Band of Horses as indie? C'mon. They're good, but they're not indie).
Nirvana's versions are vastly superior, unless you have a preference for the twee, which is admittedly sorta appropriate for these three songs. However, Cobain is so much more expressive a singer (and he actually knows how to sing), and as for the backing bands -- come on! nirvana is so much better --drumming, guitar tone, all around capability--it's not even worth talking about. that said, kudos to the Vaselines for writing those excellent songs.
This argument reminds me of people making the foolish argument that Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks" is better than Zeppelin's because it's more "authentic" ...
The true horror of a cover is when some young/ignorant kid thinks that a cover is an original. I informed one such kid that Puff Daddy did not invent "Every Breath You Take". He hated Sting's version when I played it for him. For some reason that really hurt me in my soul.
Though I do have to admit that I didn't know that GnR's "Knocking on Heavens Door" was a cover until much later.
By the way, the best cover of all time is Aretha Franklin's Respect. It defined Aretha and pretty much is what made her so famous.
Also, in bar settings cover bands are much more fun than local original bands.
This post seems to be channeling Chuck Klosterman, which isn't terribly authentic as a starting point. Other than that, is there any reason why one artist's interpretation of song should be, de facto, superior to another artist's interpretation (provided, that is, that we're talking about artists and not simply performers)? This is as silly as claiming that Edward Hopper is objectively better than Grant Wood. That's the beauty of art.
Incidentally, the White Stripes are one of the all-time greats when it comes to covers.
Listen to their versions of 'Black Jack Davey' and 'Jolene'.
Comments closed December 04, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
"Son of a Gun," the Nirvana version, is just a fucking awesome song (even just thinking about it makes me happy), and it's hard to imagine any version being better, even the original. For my money, Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" beats Dylan's, and all y'all hippies can eat it.
Posted by Charlie Murtaugh | November 20, 2006 11:32 AM