Reporter's Notebook

James, a reader in Dubai, offers a great tip for fans of our cover-song series:

Several months ago I decided to subscribe to Apple Music, and almost immediately I stumbled on something that is now one of my favourite ways to pass the time: cover surfing. I search for a song and simply look at the list of all the songs with the same name, then listen through them one by one.

Mostly a few are good, a few are unremarkable, and the rest are awful. But once in a while, I hit on a cover that stops me dead in my tracks and makes me wonder how I missed hearing it before. Recently, the cover I can’t stop listening to is “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by The Once.

It’s a lovely rendition of the early Elvis ballad, and it jumps to life after the one-minute mark:

Back to James:

This cover constantly surprises. The harmonies, the key changes, the tempo changes—everything is just so different from other versions of this song, and it’s all awesome. When you are in dire need of a smile on the way to work, just pull this out of your emergency pack of pick-me-up tunes. It won’t fail.

(Track of the Day archive here. Earlier archive here. Submit via hello@.)

A reader, Christian, keeps our cinema series alive with The Righteous Brothers closing out Top Gun:

You can crack jokes all day about this movie’s comic-book politics and repressed sexuality, but if you can sit through it and not feel something as the freeze-frame end titles begin, I don’t understand you:

RIP, Goose.

(Track of the Day archive here. Earlier archive here. Submit via hello@.)

From a superfan of the series, Marcus Wong:

I have been reading your list of the most inventive cover songs, from which I have found a few great songs to listen to. I thought Aztec Camera’s cover of Van Halen’s “Jump” was really refreshing, and I enjoyed Prince's cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” as well. I am writing to send in my suggestions for this good list.

Here’s one of a dozen covers that Marcus passes along—Tanya Chua’s version of a Train song you’ll recognize—and to me it’s better than the pop-y original:

Back to Marcus:

As I’m from Singapore, I can’t help but a recommend a Singaporean cover of a well-known song. Tanya is a singer-songwriter and producer who is renowned in the Chinese music scene. Outside of Singapore, she has a strong fan base in Taiwan, where she is a three-time recipient of the Golden Melody Awards, the Taiwanese equivalent of the Grammy awards. This relaxing jazzy rearrangement of Train’s song is littered with fleeting guitar melodies and vocals that soothe the soul.

(Track of the Day archive here. Earlier archive here. Submit via hello@.)

In 1999, the great folk-rock violinist and mandolinist Dave Swarbrick was hospitalized. The Daily Telegraph ran an obituary for him. He wasn’t dead, and he seemed to be entertained by the mix-up: “It’s not the first time I’ve died in Coventry,” he later quipped. Sadly, the emphysema that struck Swarbrick has finally felled him at age 75.

Swarbrick is most famous for his stint in Fairport Convention from 1969 to 1979. After playing on the classic Unhalfbricking, he joined the band for the equally classic Liege and Leaf. I’m partial to 1970’s Full House, which lacks singer Sandy Denny but showcases Fairport’s powerhouse instrumental abilities. Here’s Swarbrick arrangement of a series of old folk tunes into “Dirty Linen,” a single tour de force. Keep up if you can:

That’s Swarbrick on fiddle and Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol on guitars; the rhythm section of Daves Pegg and Mattacks, sometimes outshined (though not outplayed) by the band’s other virtuosi, steps forward.

Rest in peace, Swarb.

(Track of the Day archive here. Earlier archive here. Submit a song via hello@.)

A reader whose first name is Jagger fittingly flags a Rolling Stones classic:

As far as cover songs go, one that always impressed me was “Start Me Up” by The Folksmen (one of the “fake” groups from the movie A Mighty Wind). Somehow it manages to be transgressive while playing it straight. Plus, I realized I never knew what the lyrics were until hearing this version!

Those sultry, unsubtle lyrics below:

If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
You can start me up
You can start me up I'll never stop
I've been running hot
You got me ticking going to blow my top
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
Never stop, never stop, never stop
You make a grown man cry
Spread out the oil, the gasoline
I walk smooth, ride in a mean, mean machine
Start it up
If you start it up
Kick on the starter give it all you got, you got, you got
I can't compete with the riders in the other heats
If you rough it up
If you like it you can slide it up
Slide it up, slide it up, slide it up
Don't make a grown man cry
My eyes dilate, my lips go green
My hands are greasy
She's a mean, mean machine
Start it up
If start me up
Ahh... give it all you got
You got to never, never, never stop
Slide it up, baby just slide it up
Slide it up, slide it up, never, never, never
You make a grown man cry
Ride like the wind at double speed
I'll take you places that you've never, never seen
If you start it up
Love the day when we will never stop, never stop
Never, never, never stop
Tough me up
Never stop, never stop

[Outro]
You, you, you make a grown man cry
You, you make a dead man come
You, you make a dead man come

As Genius notes regarding that last lyric, “Somehow it slipped on to the radio in the UK.”

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@.)

After seeing Saturday’s TotD of The Gourds doing “Gin and Juice,” reader Adam picks another early rap anthem gone White:

I love this cover theme. (Huge shout-out to introducing me to that country version of SOM’s “This Corrosion”—wonderful!) Absolutely so many covers to chose from. Although someone already added in a crossover of a seminal rap song, I nevertheless have to call out one of my all-time favorites: Dynamite Hack’s version of Eazy-E’s “Boyz-n-the-Hood” was one of those songs that I taped off the radio back in the day and played for friends any time I could. (Sometimes, just for kicks, we would also throw in the Fat Boys’ cover of “Wipe Out” to balance things out—not quite as good a crossover, but not terrible either.)

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@.)

The latest cover song comes from reader Les Carter:

This is a wonderful series and has alerted me to a number of excellent musicians and covers. I suppose “Sweet Jane” was one of the first songs I heard that gave me a real appreciation for such music. Where to draw the line at transformative is subjective, of course. One album I love and have listened to regularly is De-Lovely, the soundtrack of the movie about Cole Porter. Ditto The Commitments and The Blues Brothers.

And I was shocked when I found out that Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” was written in the 1930s and recorded by Bing Crosby! Then there’s Paul Pena’s “Jet Airliner”—actually the original but not released until years after the (lesser) cover by the Steve Miller Band.

But for a nomination, I’m torn between Joe Cocker’s “St James Infirmary”—just incredible—and my actual choice: “I Feel Love” by the Blue Man Group with Venus Hum. The driving percussion with the vocals bring the Donna Summer song well out of the disco era.

Speaking of Bing Crosby, on this day in 1942 he recorded “White Christmas,” which became the best-selling single in history. (In the February 2001 issue of The Atlantic, James Marcus called Crosby “The First Hip White Person.”)

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@.)

A reader, Patrick O'Connor, writes:

I was looking at some of your recent “Track of the Day” movie scenes. Thanks for these nuggets of beauty and inspiration. I was reminded of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a film about the former editor at French Vogue who suffered a massive stroke and ended up suffering from Locked-in Syndrome, where he could hear and understand all that was going on around him but unable to communicate in any way except by blinking his eye.

There is a scene in the film where he is remembering back to a trip he took to the city of Lourdes with his mistress. They are driving in a convertible and her hair is flailing in the wind while the opening guitar riffs of U2’s “Ultraviolet (Light my Way)” is playing and the camera is positioned as if the viewer is in the back seat.

I will never forget that scene. It’s such a powerful combination of image and sound that elicit freedom and movement from a man trapped in his own body. It is one of the most visually stunning moments in cinema for me and also an awesome song.

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@.)

A reader with the initials B.H. flags one of the great and truly transformative cover songs: The Gourds’s version of Snoop Dogg’s ‘Gin and Juice’.” From the Wiki page for the Austin alt-country band:

Despite a sizable amount of original material, The Gourds are probably best known for a song they did not write. In fact, for most of the 16 years following their first live performance of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice,” fans could regularly be heard calling out for the band’s cover version of the song, sometimes before the show had even started. This led some to consider it an albatross, but the band continued to play the crowd pleaser, often adding a medley of impromptu cover songs to its midsection.

Update from our reader:

Glad you used it. The quote you included was quite apt. I saw The Gourds do a show here in Albuquerque once, and there were drunk frat boys howling “Gin and Juice!!!” after practically every song. They finally played it as an encore and it brought the freakin’ place down.

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@.)

Alright, here’s a global Venn-diagram intersection of musical awesomeness for you: Canada’s Daniel Lanois + Mali’s Tinariwen …

From David Graham’s interview with Lanois today:

I did a remix for Tinariwen, that African band. And I think they’re just terrific. And so I’ve become acquainted with them through that remix. I did the remix in the back of my ’72 Cadillac. It’s on the internet, check it out. I appreciate that they are a really great soul band. It’s not American soul from R&B, I just really trust their—where their music comes from. It seems like it comes from a deep place. They’re obviously people that have lived in the desert and have had hardship and travail. That really—there’s something ancient about the sensation you get from their music.

Read the full interview here.

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@.)

Reader Jason adds a few hardcore covers to the series:

So I’m thinking this one may be a little too “much” for your average reader of The Atlantic (but who knows!), but any time someone brings up crazy cover songs, I have to give an honorable mention to a couple tracks from seminal mathcore/hardcore/whatever-the-hellcore band Botch.

I’m sure most people are at least passingly familiar with “Rock Lobster” by the B-52s, and “O Fortuna,” from the opera Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. Botch gave them both their own special treatment, and I honestly think they both work extremely well as metal songs. “O Fortuna” especially lends itself well to the genre, and I would totally be down to see a full conversion of the opera done in this style (then again, I may just be nuts).

Botch’s “O Fortune” is here, but their “Rock Lobster” feels like more of a genre-bender, so it’s embedded above.

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@)

Robert Allen Zimmerman turns 75 today—though he may seem to have existed since time out of mind. (Forgive the pun.) Here’s a song for Bob. I don’t mean it to be mocking, though a cutting humor is an essential ingredient in the man’s work.

“Forever Young” was written as a lullaby for Dylan’s son Jesse, but when he recorded it on 1974’s Planet Waves, the songwriter (then a spry 33) worried that the song might be viewed as too sentimental. So while he released the original slow version—which closed side A—as a single, he also cut this more rollicking version to kick off side B. (Indeed, a friend’s girlfriend heard the slow version and teased him: “C'mon, Bob: What! Are you getting mushy in your old age?” Little did she know he’d be cutting back-to-back Sinatra tribute records in the 2010s.)

In any case, Dylan, unlike most of his peers—and indeed most musicians—has continued to make vital music well into his eighth decade. If that’s not eternal youth, what is?

As befits a magazine dedicated to the American idea, The Atlantic has written about Dylan at length over the years. From 1999, the great Francis Davis on how Dylan changed popular music. From 2010, here’s Eleanor Barkhorn on how Dylan changed the ‘60s. From 2012, Tom Hawking on some of his best lyrics here, Scott Beauchamp and Alex Shephard on his friendship with John Lennon here, and Jack Hamilton on his long-lasting brilliance here. From 2013, an impressive lyrical defense of Dylan from Conor here. Last year, I reviewed Dylan’s Shadows in the Night and wrote about how he just maybe coined a Millennial catchphrase. Forever young indeed.

(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@)