I Suspect That Tori Amos Was Somehow an Inspiration For This
Posted on April 21, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 34 Comments
But does Tori deserve credit or blame? Well, I think your answer here will tell you more about you than it will about Tori Amos (or Emm Gryner, who is the actual artist performing the work).
(Linked to from here.)
I hate that song. Really hate that song. But this version is nice. I think it’s the piano. (Still hate the song.)
Hah. I see your cover, and raise.
You know, I’ve noticed the tendency to make these cover exhibitions a contest as to who can find the weirdest cover. I’m not trying to foment a contest; I just think it’s a very Tori cover.
I don’t think that versions would go over well at Rhythm & Brews at 1am.
You know, I’ve noticed the tendency to make these cover exhibitions a contest as to who can find the weirdest cover.
I blame our ape ancestry!
She definitely deserves credit! A successful cover song should take the original and reinvent it somehow – put it in a new context, and make you see the original in a different way. This song pulls it off nicely.
That’s just wrong. It was my and my first love’s song, the original, and the cover is just…. wrong.
But funny. I’m thinking an artist who sounds like that isn’t going for knee-slapping funny.
*sighs*
Having experienced the song in all it’s terribly hairy and fun originality, this totally sucks for me. You need to be able to sing with this song at the top of your lungs, not fall asleep.
I actually thought it was Tori for a minute.
Yeah… this doesn’t work. The brilliance of Tori’s remakes of (say) Smells Like Teen Spirit is that she is personally weird enough to pull it off, and she makes her delivery weird enough that the song makes sense as a Tori Amos song. This, however, is not quirky enough to be recognizably the artist’s own work, but just comes across as a cheap ploy.
(With regards to artists changing a song enough by their personality and delivery to make it their own, arguably to a greater extent than the original, see Cash, Johnny – Hurt.)
Another great cover tune by JS Bang’s standards:
Nirvana’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”
I like Tori a lot so it’s hard to blame her. I don’t like this sound though. Maybe it has something to do with not liking the original.
Easy one, your question. “Not Def Leppard” = credit. (Hair metal. Bah. Am I still bitter you snots took my generation’s New Romantic eye-liner, scarves and hair product and made something dirty out of them? You’re damn right I am.)
Also in the credit column: Ms. Gryner is quite a cutie. Got a sorta-kinda Bjork-as-a-Spice-Girl thing going on.
Good grief. As a child of the 80’s, this is just painful. And wrong. So very wrong.
This . . .
Words fail me. And for a writer, that’s bad form.
I like new and exciting covers, but I’m very underwhelmed with this one. Interestingly enough, I had a friend that insisted the words to the chorus were, “Want Some Shooma Ha Day.” When I told him it was actually, “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, his response was, I swear:
“That doesn’t make any sense”
I’m still waiting for my shooma ha day.
I’m going to say “credit” if Tori had performed it, but “blame” since she didn’t and it’s very clearly someone who is imitating Her Toriness.
(I say “imitate” because I’m listening to some of the songs on her website and the sound is very different on most of the albums, so I have to assume she deliberately homaged the Torinator in this cover.)
That said, the only Tori Amos album I ever disliked was her covers album…and I own in some part every single album she’s ever made. Though her remake of “Time” was wonderful, the rest just fell flat for me.
Her Eminem cover on that album scared the crap out me, actually, and that’s a good thing.
I’ve really enjoyed some Emm Gryner covers I’ve heard, but this one just doesn’t work for me. I don’t even think I’d like it if I liked the original song at all. (I once dated a guy who adored Def Leppard. I won’t say that it’s what broke us up, but it certainly didn’t help.) Gryner’s cover of The Corrs’ “Breathless”, on the other hand, makes that song bearable.
Steph, that’s kind of funny to me. “Time” was one of the few covers on that album that I didn’t like. The one Tori album I didn’t particularly care for was Scarlet’s Walk, which disappointed me so much I haven’t sought out anything she’s done since.
Good enough that I just bought all her other albums off of iTunes. Of course I love that whole style of female vocalist so I’m heavily biased.
Jeff Hentosz: Actually, Joe Elliot of Def Leppard has repeatedly gone on record to say that they always considered themself more a pop band than a metal band, and that their influences were more the Glam Rock icons of the 70s (Bowie, T. Rex, Gary Glitter) than any sort of heavy metal.
Sure, that’s how they got *marketed*, and the band would have been somewhat daft to not make all that money. But if you’re going to lay the blame of hair metal on bands, keep it to your Cinderella’s and Poison’s. Those guys deserve it.
John Scalzi: I love this cover. But I’m a sucker for covers like this. I’ve been tempted to but together a 2 volume mix cd of my favourite covers….Volume 1 is titled “Oh, So Right” for covers that just transcend the material in really wonderful ways. Volume 2 is titled “Oh, So Wrong” and features the sorts of covers that break your brain.
There’s a guy whose name is currently escaping me who does AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” in the style of Dan Fogelberg. It’s breathtakingly wrong in so many wonderful ways.
The only thing I blame I ever blame Tori for is that she’s the only musician to ever make me cry at a concert, and she did it twice. Once with her aforementioned cover of “Time,” the other with a cover of “The River” she followed with “The Wheels on the Bus.” I’ve always thought she’s a genius in the way I think Maynard James-Keenan or Alan Moore are; she’s got a definite, unique perspective on things (though her ability to communicate that perspective can vary wildly).
But really I’m only commenting to note I followed that link to the via and discovered Spiderbait’s cover of Ramjam’s “Black Betty,” and it’s totally fucking awesome.
Bam-a-lam.
Oh, and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” is my karaoke song. It’s very nearly as effective as “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Neither works in all situations, but in the right ones, they’re just totally frickin’ rad.
Don’t Stop Believin’ is the only song I’ve ever done sung along to in public while other people watched. It was in Canada, I was VERY drunk, and the chick was VERY cute. Those are my official excuses.
I like Def Leppard. I am listening to Hysteria now. Will I be sorry if I click over to the cover?
I am laughing immoderately right now.
That was actually kind of cool, but my favorite cover of late has been Cylab’s version of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box”.
Well, aside from Tori’s cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I’d have to say the best cover I know of is Tricky’s cover of a Public Enemy song: Black Steel
Noooo! So wrong. I can’t flip my hair in frenzy to this.
You know, I didn’t actually believe there was any way to make that “song” suitable for human consumption.
I was wrong.
*applause*
It’s completely selfish of me, but I haven’t liked anything of Tori’s recent work – since she settled down, had a child, and became happy. Her bitter, angry stuff is amazing. Nothing past “Choirgirl Hotel” works for me.
And, her cover of “Time” is sublime, but it is her cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” that still gives me chills.
I rather liked this cover and yes, style-wise it is a rather blatant ripoff of Tori’s covers. I tend to like it when bands do covers that change the original song in some significant way and make it their own.
Rob @20 Did you mean this cover of AC/DC?
This cover was fun. What my wife now hates you for, John, is the cover I found while following the links:
Ani DiFranco and Jackie (yes, the actor) Chan singing “Unforgettable”
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
I *like* Tori Amos and I *like* Def Leppard, but none the less… Some things should just not be mixed because it will ruin both!
Cover versions like that should come with a warning like “This is a soft female voice doing a soft version of a classic hard rock song, continue at your own risk” or something like that.
This reminds me of sitting at a cafe when they played a song, which turned out to be Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in the same kind of cover version.
I’ll repeat:
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
I’m a big Tori fan, but this did not do a whole lot for me. It did make me curious enough to go see Emm’s blog where there was a photo of Rob McClennan, an Alberta-based poet who I’m reading with next week. Canada is much, much too small…
I agree — the Eminem cover was good. I can’t listen to it too often, though.
If you’re gonna try to be Tori, I think this is the way to go: