ECLECTIC : Carey Anne Farrell

 Your ‘cover’ of an earlier hit better not be that : better not be a perfect cover or copy.

Do it different and hopefully better : just similar enough for people to recognize it but different enough for people to see and hear something new and unexpected in the original they didn’t know was there.

A classic case in point is the Animals cover of Nina Simone’s version of DON’T LET ME  BE MISUNDERSTOOD.

Great song, great singer with a great variant of that song.

But someone in the Animals camp, probably Chas Chandler, heard a tiny little bit of nothing, a arranger’s throwaway counter melody buried deep in the dying seconds of the fade-out.

In the blogging biz, we call that ‘burying the lede’ !

The Animals’ team put that tiny bit of nothing in the front and centre and then beat the poop out of it over and over —- making the song a worldwide smash and enduring classic.

And today, nobody but nobody would  think to perform the tune - and no punters recognize the tune - without that hypnotic riff.

The Shangri-Las are usually seen as the girl group to end all girl groups - not the best singers or with best songs and production, but still far and away the most ‘high school girl’ of the lot.

I CAN’T GO HOME ANYMORE is probably their best.

So trying to cover the best of the best is no easy challenge.

But I think Chicago singer-songwriter/author Carey Anne Farrell has done it.

Pause and give it a listen, before or after re-hearing the original. Listen to Nina Simone’s original of Don’t let Me be Misunderstood and then the Animals’ take as well.

Carey’s selection of musical covers is the very definition of eclectic and not all work for me - but this one really does. 

Carey’s voice - though not her visual appearance - says high school lonely better than the original singers who really were just high school kids !

Meanwhile her accompaniment track retained memories of the original bombastic backing track but this time, nicely subdued and subtly spread all over the background.

I could see her version becoming a Spotify hit, the sort you’ll hear in heavy rotation in every retail outlet on the globe for the next decade..