Some time ago, when I was going through my Mark Ronson phase I was thinking a lot about what it means to do a good cover of a song. What does it take to take an old song and make it new? Usually good covers are songs that were unknown in their times and they were reinvented as successful hymns, the artists changing nothing more than the arrangement, making it more current and voilá... the new song is born! Mark Ronson's case is not like that though since all his covers break the basic rules of this business, i.e. that the covered song needs to be old and unknown. His songs were new and/or famous. Yet his record is awesome, current, relevant and his songs are appreciated by many (apart from stupid arctic monkeys who said that they cringe every time the hear his version of the smiths' classic 'stop me if you've heard this one before'). Whatever.
But it is not just Mark Ronson, who is new and modern, it is also Duffy, whose '60's feel is so now, it is covers like 'Umbrella' by the Brighton-based 'Mechanical Bride' (thanks to hallow kitty for sending it to me!), Husky Rescue's version of 'poison' and so many more.
Duffy's story is amazing and I think also very telling: living in a village in Wales, she had no access to modern music and kept listening to her parents' 45's from the 60's. When time came for her to write her own music, out it came this fantastic mixture of soul and '60's sound that sounds so original. And I think maybe that's what it takes to be original in music (and possibly elsewhere): one needs to distance oneself from the what is in fashion at the moment, because it is useless to try anyway. Things change so fast, so trying to keep up is a bit futile (we can leave that to the DJs). Originality means to be true to oneself, even if what one likes seems outdated and old, if it is true it will work. With this in mind, I am making a tribute band to the Suede, do you think it will work?
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