![]() Out of all of these (with the potential exception of the Eagles) Rod Stewart is the weirdest. The Blind Boys of Alabama’s bluesy version of Way Down in the Hole gained a ton of popularity as the theme song to HBO’s The Wire. Springsteen often brought the house down with a rendition of Jersey Girl, which some might argue sounds more like a Springsteen song than some Springsteen songs. The Eagles covered Ol’ 55 just two years after Tom had released it on his debut album. Waits is no stranger to covers eclipsing his original material, of course. He digs into the chorus, launching the melody of “Will I see you tonight?” into his arena-rock stratosphere. But like all truly great songwriters, the aching grain of truth lives under the presentation and Rod has always proven himself to be an intuitive interpreter of the soul of a song.ĭespite some apocryphal hot goss about Bob Seger showing Rod his own cover of Downtown Train in 1989 - with Seger then shelving the recording after Rod’s own suspiciously-timed rendition shot up the charts a year later - this version feels like Rod really understood the pathos behind the song. Although both artists are famed for their gravelly voices, Rod had refined his to a high-grit belt sander where Waits had allowed his to marinate in bourbon and cigarettes until it began to yellow and fray at the edges. ![]() ![]() While they may have both originated from the nexus of folk and a sort of sentimental, jazzy sensibility, Rod Stewart and Downtown Train’s author, Tom Waits, couldn’t have been more dissimilar when Rod recorded this cover in 1991. A couple weeks ago, when I was writing about Death Cab for Cutie covering Björk, it got me thinking about other covers that made for unlikely bedfellows. Although I’m really beginning to tire of the “sad Billie Eilish knockoff doing an 80s pop song super slow” that has become de rigeur for movie trailers in the last few years, a fresh angle on a lyric or a melody is really what makes for the most memorable covers.
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