everyday is a child with teeth #9: covers
I have been listening to Eartheater’s 2023 record Powders a lot lately. I saw her perform last year at a fashion party and thought she was great, but I didn’t actually realize how great until her record came on my Spotify at work—good job algorithm at feeding me good music after a Portishead record. Anyway I guess a fashion week party is never really a place to understand the transcendence of music so it’s fine. The best song on the record is “Pure Smile Snake Venom,” which starts as spiral sound coiling around and around until it explodes into a glittering beat sun-kissed by a little piano riff. “I choose not to bite you/ in spite of my venom welling up,” showing the miraculous nature of her love. But the best moment on the record is that split second when you realize the song you’re grooving to that seems suddenly familiar is System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” She sings it so softly, just her voice against an acoustic guitar, like she’s tending to a delicate wounded bird. But she does not forget the last part of the song where the music sort of ramps up in that classic slowmo-yet-heavy headbanging way and so she does it too, but hers feels stickier. Then I listened to the original version a bunch of times and found that I really loved it too—it was indeed more poetic and dramatic than I remembered, but I think it’s because I only ever think of the almost comically fast way Serj Tankian sings the main verses. My loss, obviously, though not anymore.
Last year I went through a period of listening to Nirvana’s Unplugged when it hit me that I had never heard of the original versions of the Meat Puppets songs they cover (how is it possible that I’d been so uncurious for so long?!), most of which are on 1984’s II. Listening to the original “Lake of Fire” was a revelation, like a whole universe opening itself inside my brain—what a deeply fucking weird song, what an off-the-cuff yet deeply felt way that Curt Kirkwood seems to just open his mouth and let notes come out. It made sense why Kurt Cobain loved them so much—how cool that he was able to play these songs with them!
I had never considered the two figures on the cover of The Covers Record and now I love it even more.
The best covers are faithful to the original but also a reflection of the artist’s pure vision. And when they’re done right I love covers because there’s an intrinsic vulnerability around them (“let me sing for you this song that I love!”) mixed with the bravado that it takes to then ignore what you know and love to make something of your own. Think about Cat Power’s entire The Covers Record, but specifically her cover of The Velvet Underground’s “I Found A Reason,” where she sings a handful of lines from the song against a sparse piano, not even saving the “pa-pa-paahs” or the little guitar riff, leaving nothing familiar behind. (I find this version infinitely more heartbreaking and romantic than the original.) Back when I was in college I randomly picked up a single by a band named OXES because the b-side was a cover of “Everlong.” It was instrumental, and the guitars (rock, with distortion) emphasized the more bleak, desperate longing side of the song. When the “vocals” came in as a slide guitar solo I literally burst into tears. Something new.
I have been thinking about how or if a cover can exist in a different medium. I don’t think it’s just about making a copy of an existing work, or a movie or story that is “based on” or a “remake” of something else. Then there are the works that exist to be interpreted by different people but aren’t considered covers (classical music, choreography). There’s no complete statement here, these are thoughts-in-progress.
Last week, the Times published an interview with the designer Phoebe Philo, her first in I don’t know how long, since even when she was the creative director at Céline a decade ago or whatever, she stopped granting interviews after the shows in favor of “letting the clothes speak for themselves.” The new interview proved she still feels the same way. She answered questions but didn’t (willingly) reveal anything. Reading the piece I was struck by how many of the quotes were refusals—lots of I don’ts and I nevers; and I felt a necessity to extract them from the article and then organize them in alphabetical order, in the manner of Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries:
“I’m not particularly into that.” “I don’t feel myself that I need a lot of that from other fashion houses.” “I don’t feel that there’s a huge amount of storytelling that needs to be done.” “I don’t want to get rid of them.” “I don’t know why it can’t just be continuous.” “I don’t know why there has to be such a beginning and an end in our industry.” “I never know what to expect.” “I still don’t believe it needs to be like that.”
When I started writing this, I thought of my little impulsive experiment again. How Phoebe’s quotes weirdly did have a certain kind of Sheila Heti-energy about them. (Two women speaking honestly about the things they desire? Two artists speaking about their process?) It’s obviously not a cover… but there’s something in here that is inviting me to go further.