Oh no, not me, we never lost control

This article in the NME got me thinking about cover versions. Some of these truly are terrible, although I haven't been able to face the Take That one. It also reminded me of when I was much younger, I bought Paul Young's album No Parlez and on that was a cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart. I was blissfully unaware of the original at that point, never mind any of the surrounding story, so didn't quite understand when I would read people lambasting it. Of course, once I did hear it, I understood. A song of such bitterness and regret just doesn't sound right being crooned.

So, I started thinking about good covers or ones which might even be better than the original.

My starter for ten? Nirvana's version of Bowie's Man Who Sold The World. Now I like the original well enough, but I prefer the version without the washboard and slightly ghostly vocals (to be honest, I think I even prefer the Lulu version, with Bowie on backing vocals). Nirvana's version is rawer, but infinitely superior. The classic performance is from their MTV Unplugged appearance, where Kurt gets the words wrong, and Krist Novoselic looks superbly goofy.

When they did it live on stage, it was that bit faster, that bit rawer and Kurt yelled the guitar part at the end as well as playing it.



Utterly awesome.