Seven Song Spin: Unlikely Covers

This entire playlist can be found here.

This week we finally heard a track from Spanish Model, a record Elvis Costello and Sebastian Krys have been cooking up for a while, which features some of Latin music's biggest stars singing Spanish lyrics over remastered tracks of his iconic 1978 album This Year's Model. Juanes's version of "Pump It Up" is a lot of fun, even if it's basically a kind of high-level karaoke. (I especially relished hearing the full band jam beyond the fadeout.)

It's technically not a cover in the traditional sense, but the whole project is certainly an unlikely idea. And that got me thinking about some of my favorite unlikely covers—versions of songs from artists you would not expect, and/or versions that are big departures from the original. Such as...

"Walking on Thin Ice" by Elvis Costello. He has a well deserved reputation for making most of the covers he sings sound like he wrote them (and not just one of his biggest hits, "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding"), a quality that's a bit belied by his two cover albums, the sweet but rather stiff country tribute Almost Blue and the somnabulant Kojak Variety. His better work in this vein often turns up on tribute albums, as with his sinuous take on "Edith and the Kingpin" on a Joni Mitchell tribute, or this elegant, capering deconstruction of a signature Yoko Ono tune, originally recorded for the Yoko tribute album Every Man Has a Woman around the time of Costello's Punch the Clock sessions (hence the great horn charts).

"This Flight Tonight" by Nazareth. Speaking of Joni, this version does what many of the best left-field covers do: It unleashes qualities that were hiding in plain sight in the original and gives them full flower. Go back and listen to the cut on Blue and tell me it doesn't sound a bit like a demo for a full band version, from the galloping blues guitars to the resigned cry of "Turn this crazy bird around," which just begs to be wailed.

"Success" by Sinead O'Connor. This Loretta Lynn classic had first come to my attention via Elvis's Almost Blue album, and while his version is sufficiently weepy, Sinead's take, from her strange Big Band record Am I Not Your Girl?, is something else altogether. Starting out curiously subdued and poised vocally, even as the band is going crazy around her, she builds to a release in which she cuts loose with the apocryphal cries, "I never changed! You're killing me!" and "Am I not your girl?" I'd hesitate to call it punk rock, but it's certainly miles from country.

"September Song" by James Brown. This one knocked me for a loop. I'd heard this wistful Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson song covered by everyone from Billie Holiday to Bryan Ferry (not to mention its originator, Walter Huston), but not even Lou Reed's laconic take is as big a departure as the Godfather of Soul's age-defying rendition, which kicks the darkness till it bleeds daylight. The harmonies are blues-ified, the accompaniment funk-ified, and the vocals phrased and embellished in signature Brown style, grunts and screams and interpolated lyrics and all (including a reference to "cold sweat" and a promise to "put more glide in your stride and more gut in your strut"). No time for the waiting game indeed.

"Come as You Are" by Caetano Veloso. I only caught up recently with the Brazilian master's album of American standards, loosely defined, teasingly titled A Foreign Sound, which is worth listening all the way through. But this take on Nirvana's haunting invitation is both entirely faithful and subtly transformative.

"You're the One That I Want" by Lucy Woodward. I discovered this first-rate white soul belter via her fine rendition of Peggy Lee's "Sans Souci," and I've since happily devoured all her records, including a few recent efforts with minimalist guitar god Charlie Hunter. This, off her newest, I'm a Stranger Here, redeems, or at least makes smokily sexy, what has always sounded to me like a cheesily catchy pop confection. (Another candidate for this spot: her mellow, heartfelt rendition of the chirpy old novelty song "Music Music Music.")

"Fixing a Hole" by George Burns. The Beatles may have been winking when they tried on vintage sounds, but this hilariously straight-faced rendition of my favorite song from the original Sgt. Pepper's album—which isn't even one of Paul's vaudeville turns, strictly speaking, though it has a bright, old-timey strut to it—makes the throwback aesthetic explicit. "When I'm 64" or "Honey Pie" would have been a much more obvious choice for Burns to sing in this misbegotten Bee Gees/Frampton vehicle from 1978. That he was instead pressed into rendering this sidelong lament about distractions and stubborn individualism with a get-off-my-lawn growl makes me love them, and this oddball song, all the more.