Ninety percent of writing is rewriting, or so I’ve heard. Sometimes, though, it’s actually 100%. For those of you who get stuck in the arduous and perhaps tedious world of revising, consider this: what if you only revised? What if you took something that somebody else wrote and revised it? Could you revise it in such a way as to express your own creativity while keeping the original recognizable?
These are the questions musicians have to ask when they record and record cover songs. Consider, for your enjoyment and edification, the following ten songs, each of which has two versions, representing five different approaches (but by no means the only approaches) to covering a song. *
Approach No. 1: Rough it Up
"Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus, covered by Le Butcherettes
"Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift, covered by the Screaming Females
This first approach takes a song, rubs off the polish, pushes it into the dirt, rolls it around, stands it back up and says, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Miley and Taylor crafted a pair of superb pop anthems, but Le Butcherettes and The Screaming Females came in and said, “Sure, but what if you added distortion, removed the production quality, sang off key, or maybe not sing at all but just scream?”
If you like approach No.1 and want to try it in writing, take one of those perfectly polished New Yorker fiction pieces and see if you can rub some grit in it.
Approach No. 2: Tone it Down
“No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age, covered by Inara George
Boy, Glenn Danzig and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) both know how to belt it like a great rock vocalist. “But”, Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak) and Inara George ask, “What if you crooned?” In both these cases, toning down the energy actually helps the covers highlight the angst buried in the original. Where the originals are expressions of raw emotion, the covers feel like thoughtful meditations of repressed feelings.
Try approach No.2 with the sort of writing people tend to have knee-jerk reactions to – a passage from Chuck Palahniuk or Bret Easton Ellis, for example. Try reigning in the intensity by moving it from the heart to the head. Easier said than done, right?
Approach No. 3: Funk it Up
"No Diggity" by Blackstreet, covered by Chet Faker
“No One’s Gonna Love You” by Band of Horses, covered by Cee Lo
Also known as the “Proud Mary” approach after Tina Turner’s cover of the Creedence Clearwater revival song, this approach gives a little more emotional oomph to the original. Chet Faker’s grooviness really sells us on how sexy “shorty” must be. Cee Lo Green’s croon communicates just how lovesick he really is. When you funk it up, you wear your soul on your sleeve.
Take a piece with a cold or matter-of fact writing style and use approach No.3 to inject a little life in it. Give it some soul! Make it groovy! Shout your feelings from the bandstand!
Approach No. 4: Strip It Down
"Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson, covered by Caetano Veloso
"Arrhythmic Palpitations" by Dead to Me, covered by Chris Cresswell
Why use 7 words when 4 would suffice? Why put a full band together when a voice and a guitar? Caetano Veloso and Chris Cresswell had the same idea when they looked at “Billie Jean” and “Arrhythmic Palpitations”, respectively. “You’re working too hard!” they said to the originals, “Here, let me show you how it’s done.” And they played the same songs with half the work.
If you want to use this approach in writing, it may function as an inverse of approach No.3. Find a piece with a flowery or over-the-top style and get rid of everything superfluous. If you’re brave, you could use this method to turn the works of Marcel Proust or Karl Ove Knausgard into short stories
Approach No. 5: Flip the Emotional Resonance on its Head
"Bitches ain't Shit" by Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg, covered by Ben Folds
"Hand on Your Heart" by Kylie Minogue, covered by José Gonzalez
Here’s the real hard approch, but man when you pull it off its like a damn magic trick. “Bitches ain’t Shit” is a swaggering, misogynistic, gangster anthem, but Ben Folds turns it into a satire of soft-rock love ballads. “Hand On Your Heart” is a bubblegum ditty with a dance-floor beat, but in the hands of José Gonzalez it’s an elegy to love and loss.
You could totally pull off approach No.5, so give it a try? Do you think you could find a way to make a Raymond Carver story feel like it was written by P.G. Wodehouse? Or maybe inject a Nicholas Sparks romance with a hint of Lovecraftian horror? Who knows? The only limit is your creativity.
* If you don’t feel like wading through this whole article but still want the full covers experience, here’s a playlist with all 20 songs versions in a row: click here to check it out.
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