2008-06-30

Canadian Cover Songs

From the Ceeb.
So of course, they can't help but getting a dig in at George Bush, and totally miss the fun of Nemoy covering Joni Mitchell.

Rascal Flatts, Life Is a Highway (Tom Cochrane)

When people look back at American pop culture during the George W. Bush era, they’ll look back at Rascal Flatts, a hugely successful country group from Nashville. That trio created this stultifying reading of Tom Cochrane’s joyous ode to gas-guzzling for the 2006 film Cars. Perhaps the most faithful, note-for-note cover version in musical history; starkly unoriginal and unnecessary given the sing-along perfection of the original.

Lenny Kravitz, American Woman (The Guess Who)

Rock’s blandest artist manages to sap all the life out of one of the great Canadian singles. This Guess Who song had it all: a stunning vocal from Burton Cummings, that irresistible Bachman hook and some anti-American lyrics that were mildly controversial in the Vietnam War era. Kravitz’s recipe: reduce the energy level, preen, add water and mix for four minutes. Voila: a turgid cover of a Canuck classic! Serves millions easily.

Leonard Nimoy, Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)

The musically talentless Nimoy actually managed to parlay his success as Spock on TV’s Star Trek into a modest recording career in the ’60s and ’70s, and even had a minor hit with the track Highly Illogical. Given his emotionless small-screen persona, it perhaps made sense for him to tackle a song that required him to look – logically, of course — at love from “both sides now” and confess, “I really don’t know love at all.” This impossibly stiff “reading” of Mitchell’s wistful masterpiece is a low point in U.S.-Canada relations.

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