Cover Versions Whose Tone Results In The Lyrics Being Interpreted Differently

Music
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Damn, I’ve got the CD of this! The Plan’s Crush is amazing, completely turns the tune around.

Juno’s take on DJ Shadow did not do the same, I’m sorry to say.

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While I don’t personally interpret it in this way whatsoever, Pitchfork for some reason believed the tone of The Twilight Singers’ cover of Strange Fruit to be “desperately sexual” and treated it as fact. I thought that was bizarre enough that the review stayed with me all these years.

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Not a cover but I know Rowland S Howard didn’t like Nick Cave singing on Shivers instead of him when they were in The Boys Next Door cos Cave sang his ironic deadpan lyrics very earnestly and they were then interpreted as such

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Another one that’s not quite a cover, but QOTSA lifting Creep’s “I want you to notice when I’m not around” for You Can’t Quit Me Baby makes the line more menacing.

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Original “girls just want to have fun” vs the famous one

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Also Anthony Hegarty’s cover of “crazy in love”

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Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory. Pollard’s original sounds like a hobo remembering true love through the fog of years and substance abuse. Delirious despair.
Keely’s version sounds like Prince George III trying to bugger a grand piano at a royal wedding. Insatiable decadence.
Obviously both are fucking fantastic.

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