Last week, I talked about covers of songs that had enjoyed a bit of initial success, but eventually came to be identified with the artist that ended up doing a more popular cover. This week’s example might seem the same at first glance, but is fundamentally different. In this case, the original artist produced a track that was 100% that artist – that is, an audience would have identified it as a song that only could have come to from that artist. And then another came along and recorded that song in such a an astounding way that it changed it – fundamentally – forever. I can’t think of too many examples of this, but the following two tracks illustrate it perfectly:
This the original audio track (video isn’t, because Universal is afraid of its fans):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0bZtf5MCzY[/youtube]
So now you know what comes next:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSWTgLvxPYc[/youtube]
After this? There is no other version. It is one of the most inspired covers – and videos – I know.