Better Than the Original: The Joy of the Cover Version

# And more, much more than this

# I did it my way. #

Great cover versions are about taking someone else's song...

# Regrets, I've had a few. #

..and doing it your way.

# But then again, too few to mention. #

If you unearth a new meaning, or suddenly realise,

"Holy cow. That's what that song's about?"

It's great.

# Respect when I come home. #

When the alchemy works,

the cover can be even better than the original.

# R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. #

I feel like she took it and just, was like, "Here, pretty bird."

# Oh, you had better go now. #

We follow the journeys of a handful of classic covers.

As it started off, it sounded like me.

I said, "That's not me."

Spread over five decades, each cover is a child of its time.

# The best things in life are free. #

There are plenty of good ideas. Why bother to have any more?

A great cover can take a song to a different place.

# Sometimes I feel I've got to... #

# Run away, I've got to... #

I never liked the word "tainted."

It was like, "Oh, I'm saying something nasty."

In the process, there are both winners and losers.

# Every step you take. #

# I'll be missing you. #

I was sort of incensed about it because

the guy sold 30 million singles off my guitar part.

# Fire my imagination. #

And we discover how classic covers are sometimes even better

than the real thing.

# No, no, no. #

# Hey, hey, hey. #

Usually, you're picking a song that you already like.

So it's more about finding new light, finding a new way in.

-# I can't get me no

-Satisfaction. #

If you're going to record another artist's song,

I think you should do it because you think you could do it better.

-# I can't get me no

-Satisfaction

-# Well, I can't get no

-Satisfaction. #

-# You know you make me wanna...

-Shout

-# Kick my heels up and...

-Shout

-# Throw my hands up and...

-Shout

-# Throw my head back and...

-Shout. #

In the '50s, the future looked American.

# Don't forget to say, yeah, yeah. #

Life over there was Technicolor...

..glamorous.

We wanted their lifestyle...

# All right

# Now wait a minute. #

..and their music.

Dream Boy, take ten.

# Let me walk you home after school. #

We just weren't very good at it.

# Come on, sweetheart. #

I think perhaps a little bit more echo on the voice.

-You'd better give him a bit more echo.

-Yes, OK.

# I'm your fool. #

Our charts were crammed with cover versions,

but they were just bland copies of Tin Pan Alley hits.

# Dream girl, dream girl, you're for me. #

You have to remember that every single hit song

every week in the charts in England had been a hit song in America.

It was a cover version, and the A&R people and record companies

went to America once a month and they took all the latest songs

and brought them back to England and just remade them.

They were almost the same song.

SCREAMING

But by the '60s, something was stirring.

A new generation of British bands started covering rock'n'roll,

rhythm and blues, even folk.

Songs from outside the American pop mainstream.

The British invasion began with American songs.

MUSIC: House Of The Rising Sun by The Animals

# There is a house in New Orleans

# They call the Rising Sun. #

Yeah, it sounds good.

# And it's been the ruin.... #

Instantly conjures up another place in time.

# And God I know I'm one. #

In 1964, The Animals topped the charts in Britain,

with a cover version of House Of The Rising Sun.

It sounded unlike anything ever heard before

from a British band.

# Oh, Mother

# Tell your children

# Not to do what I have done. #

I think the mere fact that it was an English accent

and the fact it was a slightly dodgy subject,

and up to then the radio had always banned anything

which could be anything near about a prostitute, or even sex.

I think that hooked everybody.

# Down in New Orleans. #

The Animals were from Newcastle, not New Orleans,

a place as far away to them as the moon.

Yet, somehow, they brought something dangerous out of a cautionary

folk tale about loose living.

For generations, House Of The Rising Sun had been

sung across America, and the song was constantly changing.

# There is a house in New Orleans. #

Its path to Newcastle began in 1937, when the young song collector

Alan Lomax visited Kentucky.

Whilst there, he met a miner's daughter, named Georgia Turner,

and recorded her singing a song she'd grown up with.

-GEORGIA TURNER:

-# They call the Rising Sun

# It's been the ruin of many a girl. #

He logged it as Rising Sun Blues.

You listen to it and it is very, very clearly

the song House Of The Rising Sun.

The tune is different, but you have this 15-year-old, ethereal voice

singing at you from 1937 these lyrics, that we're now all

so familiar with.

By the 1950s, Georgia Turner's version had entered

the repertoire of every

self-respecting American folk musician.

But it lacked a standard arrangement, until the arrival

of the debut album by Bob Dylan.

-BOB DYLAN:

-# There is a house down in New Orleans. #

The House Of The Rising Sun

has been open to many different permutations.

And this is true of many folk songs if they've come from

an oral tradition.

Bob Dylan's the first person to really nail that melody

and to nail down some definitive chords.

He's playing it in A minor.

SHE PLAYS HOUSE OF RISING SUN

His recording of it is a blank slate, effectively,

because it's just a vocal and guitar.

So that leaves the door wide open for The Animals

to do something quite radical.

The Animals took House Of The Rising Sun into the studio one morning

in May 1964.

There was one engineer there and when Hilton was racking up

to do the intro... "No, no, no, you can't do that, man!

"It's distorting." And we're going, "That's what we want - distortion!"

# There is house in New Orleans. #

They plug in, they make it a dark, electric sound.

The feel is somehow a lot more menacing

and that gives it a massive excitement.

# Of many a poor boy, and God... #

You hear Eric Burdon's voice.

It contains...

all of the misery of the Blues.

# My mother was... #

You feel emotion and you feel the pull of sin, you feel the pull

of something that you know is not good for you,

but you're going to do it anyway.

# My father was a gamblin' man

# Down in New Orleans. #

Going electric added a further element to the song -

the giddy sound of Alan Price's organ.

One of my favourite movies of the time was called

Walk On The Wild Side.

And the soundtrack was by Jimmy Smith, and the keyboard

was just phenomenal.

And I played it to Alan and I said,

"This is what you've got to do

"end of verse three, stop, and go into it."

Boom, chak, da-da, da-da-da-dun

To push the whole thing along.

I hear that organ and I think,

"OK, the red-light district of New Orleans."

I think of the people that they used to called "professors,"

who played the piano in the brothels.

The keyboard wakes you up, set you on fire, you know.

"Wow, what's all this about?"

"Sex for sale?" "Oh, my God."

This is, you know, the devil himself at work.

# And God I know I'm one. #

CHEERING AND SCREAMING

After recording Rising Sun and performing it,

I'd be backstage and I'd have a girl on each arm.

I'd think, "Wow, this is great."

The Animals unleashed something in themselves

and their audience with the song.

And it made them stars.

-NEWSREEL:

-Here they are, The Animals,

Britain's hottest new rock'n'roll export.

And when they took it back to America, they ignited

a generation of teenagers,

who plugged into the song's dangerous undercurrents.

Swept to the number one spot on both

the US and British pop charts.

Everything British was now beautiful.

The teenage magic follows The Animals as they take

temporary refuge in their hotel.

SCREAMING

Led by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones,

the British invasion saw a stream of bands re-exporting

American songs back across the Atlantic.

Whoa!

# Well, shake it up, baby now! #

It proved irresistible to US teenagers, hungry for the new sound.

# Come on, come on, come on, come on, baby, now

# Come on, baby

# Come on and work it on out. #

But the success of a British cover could also spell the downfall

of the original American artist.

# We've already said

# Goodbye

# And since you've gotta go

# Boy, you had better go now. #

Go Now was a ballad writing for aspiring New York singer

Bessie Banks, by her husband Larry, to launch her into the big time.

# Boy, you see me cry. #

It was a break-up song, made all the more poignant

as Larry and Bessie had separated some time before.

Despite being produced by Leiber and Stoller,

Bessie was initially unsure it would be a hit.

I didn't think too much of it, because you can't dance to it.

And I was used to dancing to the music that I really liked.

# Still in love with you now. #

Despite Bessie's reservations, Go Now, released in 1964,

soon found itself on the airwaves.

It was picked Hit Of The Week.

That means you play it for, like, seven days.

They called it the Shooting Star Of The Week.

I was so sure that, you know, this was going to make it,

you know, for me.

It was played four days and the fifth day...

I turned the radio on, I hear The Moody Blues.

I thought it was myself, you know, because it started off,

it sounded like me. I said, "That's not me."

# Goodbye

# Since you gotta go, you had better go now. #

Birmingham band The Moody Blues were also looking for material

for a breakthrough hit.

# Go now. #

When you haven't heard it for a long time,

you can see why it was a hit.

There's something about it.

# I don't want you tell me just what you intend to do now. #

Our friend was a DJ and he went to America

and brought a huge suitcase back of 45 singles.

And Go Now was one of the songs in there.

It fit perfectly with our line-up.

You know, harmonies, piano, whatever.

So, immediately, I went, "That's a definite."

# I don't wanna see you go. #

The Moody Blues knew they'd found a potential hit.

All they needed to do was make some tweaks.

# Go now. #

By the time The Moody Blues have covered it,

they've sped it up slightly. That all helps make something feel

a bit more commercial.

One of the quirky things about the song is the piano solo,

because it's like a pub piano, basically.

But I think it's an example of the way that British acts

were covering the American records, and then re-exporting

American music back to the Americans, but with a particularly

British twist on it.

# Oh, you had better go now. #

The Moody Blues' decision to cover Go Now proved inspired.

It was fun having a number one hit, you know, and obviously,

I mean, you're watching it, you're going, "What?"

You're hearing it on the radio, you're like kids.

But, yeah.

Life just changed overnight.

Life also changed for Bessie Banks the moment she heard

the Moody Blues' version of Go Now on the radio.

They played them, and...they dropped me.

They weren't playing too much American music at that time anyway.

It was the British Invasion.

So I said, well, this is just not the right time.

Bessie's career never recovered.

# I don't wanna see you go But darlin', you better go now. #

# Sure you haven't got the wrong number? #

But the right cover in the right style could work miracles,

even in America.

# Well, everyone in town's got your number... #

By 1967, after six years with Columbia Records,

Aretha Franklin felt she needed a new start.

# ..you got in touch... #

I think I owned a copy of her Columbia album.

I could tell she had a great voice,

but the songs were cocktail lounge music to my head.

Her new label, Atlantic Records,

wanted to take her in a new direction.

And for inspiration, they looked to the south.

# What you want

# Baby, you've got it

# And what you need

# Baby, you've got it... #

With his 1965 album Otis Blue,

singer Otis Redding had become a soul star.

# Hey, hey, hey! #

His untamed style excited Aretha on one song in particular.

# Honey, if you want it... #

Oh, Otis.

The idea for Respect came from one of Otis's close friends.

Those were some happy times.

Good times.

Respect, the title of the song,

came up by my ex.

And she came up with, "Do me wrong, do me wrong while I'm gone,"

and I came up with, "Give me respect when I come home."

# ..when I come home... #

It was more of a pleading type thing, you know.

# Do me wrong, do me wrong Do me wrong while I'm gone

# But give me respect when I come home. #

You know, it was like that.

Earl "Speedo" Simms initially went into the studio with Otis

to record Respect himself.

I tried to do my version,

but my voice just couldn't hold up.

So he said, "Hey, man, why don't I go head and do the song?"

And I said, "OK, fine."

# Respect when I come home, yeah... #

Otis's Respect was a macho plea for attention from his woman

after a hard day's work.

# ..What I need Respect is what I want

# Respect is what I need... #

It was fun. It was just a fun session.

We were serious in our recording, but we knew

it was more of a comedy song.

I don't think when we finished it we knew it was really good.

Uh, that it would be more than...

Treated anything more than a comical song, until Aretha.

And she brought some seriousness into it.

-# Ooh

-What you want

-# Baby, I got it... #

-Wow.

# What you need... #

She was a great piano player,

and when we recorded Respect,

I think she just sat down and started playing

and we all played with her.

# Just a little bit Just a little bit... #

Which was a different groove than Otis,

and her voice was connecting, you know, it was like...

A beautiful thing.

-# Ooh

-All I'm askin'... #

The biggest change from Otis's version

came out of Aretha's gospel roots -

the intricately arranged backing vocals.

I had her...

She and her sisters and friends had worked up those parts at home,

brought it to the studio, and here we go, you know?

-# When you got

-Sock it to me Sock it to me, sock it to me

-# A little respect

-Sock it to me Sock it to me, sock it to me... #

# Sock it to me Sock it to me, sock it to me... #

You know, I never heard that before in a song.

-# A little respect

-Just a little bit... #

They've created this amazing call-and-response

which is really joyous and feels quite off-the-cuff

and gives the song kind of its big hook.

-# Just a little bit

-Oh, yeah

-Just a little bit... #

They've also dropped the key of the song.

Aretha's singing it a tone lower than Otis.

And yet it feels like they're singing higher

because of where she's singing in her vocal register.

-# Just a little bit

-Good God of mine... #

This high-chest voice, which is really tough as a singer,

but it brings this incredible urgency and excitement to the song.

-# Just a little bit Just a little bit

-Oh, yeah

# Just a little bit... #

Oh, I loved Aretha's version,

cos, uh, it was poppin'. Know what I'm saying?

I feel like she took it and was just like, "Here, pretty bird."

I mean, you know, it's a great song,

but two totally different feels.

She put some hot sauce on it, you know.

He had just some honey on the plate,

she had, like, some dinner!

-# Sock it to me

-Just a little bit

# R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me... #

Aretha had taken Otis's throwaway tune

and transformed it into an anthem of empowerment

that was taken up by civil rights protesters across America.

We are black! Our noses are broad!

Our lips are big!

And we are beautiful!

-And we are beautiful!

-# A little respect, hey, baby... #

Jerry played Respect by Aretha Franklin to Otis Redding

and his words were, "That woman done stole my song."

It's a beautiful thing, you know, and that's what he meant.

He gave it up to her at that moment.

# What would you do if I sang out of tune

# Would you stand up and walk out on me? #

As the '60s turned into the '70s,

a decent cover version continued to strike the right chord.

# Picture yourself on a boat on a river... #

The songs of artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan,

who'd themselves started off doing covers,

were becoming modern standards.

# Somebody calls you You answer... #

# My darling young one... #

Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry

reimagined songs such as Dylan's protest song

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall.

# I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans... #

It was hard to tell whether Ferry was being arch,

artful or affectionate.

Or all three.

# And it's a hard... #

Artifice was all, as the decision to reject the sincerity of the '60s

opened up new possibilities for the cover version.

In the '70s, I think there was a lot of trying to figure out

who we were and where we were and what we were doing and why.

And we'd got this feeling that maybe protest was obsolete.

Maybe subversion was the way you had to change things.

# We are Devo

# Are we not men? #

Devo were five college friends from Ohio

whose music satirised corporate life and conformity.

Their sound and image were defiantly geeky.

So they decided to record a cover version

as an entry point for people trying to get a handle on their vision.

They chose a song that had made a big impression on them as kids.

# I can't get no

# Satisfaction

# And I've tried, and I've tried... #

I bought the single Satisfaction,

and to me it was the most cocksure, punky sound I'd ever heard.

# I can't get no

# Satisfaction... #

I remember playing the single and this woman from my mom's church

came over and she looked at my mom, she goes,

"Mary, why do you let that boy listen to that song?

"Those lyrics are dirty."

# I can't get no... #

And I was like, "Oh!" So once I heard that

I went to the basement and I played the song a thousand times.

I'm like, "What's so dirty? I don't get it."

"What is it that the parents don't like?"

And I couldn't figure it out!

It was awesome.

Fast-forward a decade to the mid '70s.

Ohio was in the grip of one of the fiercest winters on record.

One bitterly cold night,

Devo decided to take the heat out of the Stones classic.

We rehearsed in a tool shed that we were allowed to set equipment up in,

and it was unheated, so everybody's standing in there

with gloves and coats and breathing steam,

and we were standing around, and, uh...

Bob number two, Bob Casale,

started playing this little nervous guitar thing -

# Buh buh buh da-da da-da... #

It was just this kind of weird little phrase.

And the drummer just started

putting that kind of Tinker Toy mechanical beat to it.

Gerry and Bob both started playing parts over the top of that.

# I can't get no

# Satisfaction... #

And so I sang Satisfaction over it

because just the idea of putting it over the top of that

while we're all standing there shivering at the same time

made everybody laugh.

# I can't get no... #

It was just something that came out of

being as cold as you could possibly be,

people playing things that you played

when you were in sub-zero temperatures.

# No, no, no... #

The effect on the song was remarkable.

Gone was its original '60s swagger,

replaced by...something twitchier.

# I can't get no... #

It sounds like I'm on helium.

Yeah, I had a...

Oh, yeah. I sang way up there somehow.

# I can't get no

# No, no, no... #

It's one thing to have fun with a classic song,

but in 1977, to release a Stones cover,

you still had to get permission from the band.

So Devo nervously went to New York to meet Mick Jagger.

We put on the single and Jagger's sitting there

and he's just, like, listening to it for about a minute,

then he jumped up and he started dancing around the room.

And Gerry and I were watching him and he was, like,

doing his, you know, he was dancing just like Jagger.

You know, he did a very good impression of himself.

Afterwards he said, "I like it, I like it."

He said, "That's my favourite version of the song."

-# Well, I can't get no

-Satisfaction. #

Devo weren't the only ones in the late '70s

subverting classic songs.

At the time, we thought,

"Oh, we haven't got any money, we'll be pop stars."

And that's what we did.

MUSIC: Money by the Flying Lizards

The Flying Lizards brought their own distinctive sound

to a handful of old tunes.

# The best things in life are free

# But you can give them to the birds and bees

# I want money... #

A cover version's something that's kind of easy to plug into.

# Your love gives me such a thrill... #

As soon as you kind of take a pop song and start working on it,

it's still recognisably pop music,

no matter how...bizarre the instrumentation might be.

# That's what I want... #

I expect you're wondering why we did cover versions.

I suppose one answer might be,

there are plenty of good ideas - why bother to have any more?

The band adopted an equally no-nonsense approach

to their choice of covers.

Successful records were either about sex, money or cars,

and Gary Numan had just done Cars,

and I thought, well, I know a song about money.

MUSIC: Money by the Beatles

# Your lovin' don't pay my bills... #

The Beatles cut their teeth on tunes like Money,

which had been the first hit for the Motown label,

sung by Barrett Strong.

# That's what I want... #

And it was a tune that John Lennon revisited in the late 1960s.

# The best things in life are free

# But you can give it to the birds and bees... #

I knew it from a John Lennon live album,

the Plastic Ono Band Live In Toronto, 1969.

# Oh! #

That's a practically heavy metal version.

GUITAR SOLO

In 1979, ten years after the Plastic Ono Band,

Money's materialism was to acquire a new relevance.

I think it was released a few months before Thatcher was elected,

but this ongoing rush of madness and greed was in the air.

I think...there has to be a kind of zeitgeist in it.

Something, er...indescribably of its time.

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.

"MONEY" RIFF PLAYS

The Flying Lizards met at Maidstone College of Art,

and they brought a conceptual approach to the recording of Money.

We decided to prepare the piano

in a way that, say, I knew from the works of John Cage -

the prepared piano with little things on the strings.

We put in Chopin's Etudes, I think it was,

we put in the London telephone directory on top of the strings,

and then you get this clanky, banjo-y kind of hybrid sound.

The music was DIY, but initially,

there were higher hopes for the vocals.

Deborah, the singer...

I just assumed that she'd probably sing like Tina Turner.

-SPOKEN:

-# The best things in life are free... #

And this turned out to not be the case.

-# I want money

-That's what I want... #

People wonder why I speak the songs instead of singing them.

# That's what I want... #

The answer is really very straightforward.

Um...

singing is more difficult.

# That's what I want... #

Money proved an unexpected hit for the Flying Lizards,

reaching number five in the UK charts.

The Flying Lizards really... not being much of a group,

and I'm not much of a musician,

and the singer kind of couldn't sing very well, and, er...

I hesitate to use the term "get away with it",

but we got away with it.

The Flying Lizards boldly ripped up a classic

and deliberately drained it of its warmth.

But in an age of cold electronic beats,

what if you tried to combine the chilliness of contemporary sounds

with the soulfulness of an older song?

We wanted a song that would fit into our set,

and we thought it would be great to do something

that's away from the usual electronica,

you know, writing about alienation and modern life

and being very kind of cold and robotic and things.

# Here in my car I feel safest of all

# I can lock all my doors... #

So I thought... Dave said Northern Soul,

and I saw this record, Tainted Love by Gloria Jones.

MUSIC: Tainted Love by Gloria Jones

And I just was instantly hooked by it.

# Sometimes I feel I've got to

# Run away, I've got to

# Get away.... #

It's something that starts with a great line.

"Sometimes I feel I've got to run away."

That's just how I feel a lot of the time.

And when I pick a song to do that's somebody else's,

it has to relate to me lyrically

and say something about my life or to me.

It's a very simple song, but it just grabbed me.

This is the original.

Aww.

# I give you all a girl can give you... #

Tainted Love was written by Ed Cobb and recorded by Gloria Jones

in New York in 1965.

# Tainted love... #

It was the B-side of a flop single.

But the record was to have a second lease of life

after it shipped up in the UK.

How it got here, like so many other American records,

is the stuff of legend.

Well, there was a Navy man.

They had just docked in Liverpool.

So there was a young kid passing by,

and the sailor said, "Hey, I need a cigarette.

"I'll give you this 45 for the cigarette."

Well, the kid took the 45,

and he was on his way to the social club,

so when he got there, he said, "You've gotta play this record."

And they played Tainted Love,

and the kids went crazy.

# Now I know I've got to

# Run away, I've got to... #

The Northern Soul scene in Britain took Tainted Love to its heart.

Part of the appeal to clubbers

was the song's dark, sexual undertones.

# Tainted love

# Don't touch me, please

# I cannot stand the way... #

I never liked that song.

I never liked the word "tainted", that was my problem.

I just didn't understand the word.

Cos I was a virgin, so I was clean,

so this was like, "Ooh! I'm saying something nasty."

# Oh, tainted love... #

But for Soft Cell, that was precisely part of the song's appeal.

Tainted Love - what a great title.

It has all these kind of connotations,

it's kind of a little bit dark, slightly kind of sleazy feel.

This fits into our world.

MUSIC: Tainted Love by Soft Cell

In 1981, Soft Cell went into the studio

to record Tainted Love.

They took with them this piece of paper

detailing their carefully worked-out plan for the song.

It was very much kind of a bare sound.

# Sometimes I feel I've got to

# Run away... #

We didn't want to, like, put lots of banks of keyboards

and banks of sounds and overproduce it.

You know, it's a skip drumbeat.

Me doing the "dink dink" and the "ti-ti-ti-ti".

# Run away... #

Dave doing the "ah ah"

I can almost see Dave doing it now,

that kind of look he always has going "ah ah".

It's almost, like, defiant.

# Take my tears and that's not nearly all

# Tainted love... #

By the time Soft Cell have taken it

and put it in this really glacial soundscape

with synths and programmed beats,

and then you have this wonderful, passionate vocal on top.

It's kind of more original than the original.

# ..any more from me To make things right

# You need someone to hold you tight... #

In fact, Mark's vocal performance

was only intended as a warm-up in the studio.

But it had an intensity that was perfect for the song.

-# Once I ran to you

-I ran... #

I suppose it was a thing that I got from punk,

that something shouldn't be overproduced,

it should be just there, you just go in and do it

and give it your kind of passion and what you feel,

with all that nervous energy that you have of doing it,

and you're building up to that vocal. That's it.

# Don't touch me, please

# I cannot stand the way you tease... #

Soft Cell's Tainted Love struck a chord with the record-buying public,

reaching the top of the charts in the UK.

And in the US, it stayed in the Hot 100

for a record-breaking 43 weeks.

It's 35 years later,

and the record's still played on radio.

It's still danced to on a Saturday night.

That's a huge power and potency to have,

and people may cover it, but I don't think they will ever

have that success that Soft Cell had with Tainted Love.

I'm still trying to come up with a hit.

I want to beat Marc Almond.

See what you're starting?

Look, look!

# I need the beat, I need the beat... #

The emergence of hip-hop into the mainstream in the '80s

raised the question, when is a cover not a cover?

Hip-hop was a DJ culture.

They took beats and samples from old tunes

and rapped over them.

But then in 1986, the old world collided with the new.

MUSIC: Walk This Way by Run DMC and Aerosmith

-# But there's a backseat

-Lover

# That's always undercover

# And I talk to my dad, he say... #

Hip-hop group Run DMC and veteran rockers Aerosmith

came together to record Aerosmith's 1975 hit Walk This Way.

It was a perfect storm.

Hip-hop paired up with classic rock.

# Walk this way Talk this way

# Walk this way... #

The idea was by doing a cover version of a song

that was familiar, it would explain the musicality of hip-hop.

# Just gimme a kiss! #

It really is like a prototypical rap record.

It's more about the phrasing than it is about the melody,

and that's really what hip-hop does.

With its heavily symbolic video primed for the MTV generation,

Walk This Way kicked over the door.

# Little skirt hanging way up her knee

# There were three young ladies... #

It allowed rap to be played on radio stations

that would never play rap music,

because they knew the song and they knew Aerosmith,

so...it was a calling card for hip-hop.

By the mid-'90s, hip-hop was customising the cover version,

raiding old tunes for their hooks and choruses

and giving them a new context.

# Strumming my pain with his fingers... #

The Fugees scored a massive global hit in 1996

with their version of Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly.

# Killing me softly with his song

# Killing me softly... #

But one hip-hop cover version would trounce all others

in terms of sales.

Yet it was born out of tragedy.

MUSIC: Hypnotize by Notorious BIG

Notorious BIG was an East Coast rap icon

until his death in a drive-by shooting in 1997.

It was a murder that stunned the hip-hop world,

including his friend and collaborator, Puff Daddy.

It's hurting me.

I'm shocked every day, like, I can't believe it every day

that Biggie's not here.

Puff Daddy had ambitious plans

for how to commemorate his dead friend, BIG.

And he wanted BIG's widow to be a part of it.

He reached out to me saying that

he wanted to do a record to honour BIG,

to honour his memory,

and he wanted it to be the biggest tribute song ever made in history.

# I miss you in the worst kind of way

# I miss you more and more... #

Initially, the music was going to be

based off of the O'Jays record called Miss You,

which is very slow, very sad,

and I couldn't even make it through

listening to that song over and over,

to think of something to write to it.

I think we cried the whole couple of hours we were in the studio

and, you know, came back to take another shot,

and thankfully, it was a new track.

MUSIC: Every Breath You Take by the Police

# Every breath you take... #

Every Breath You Take had been

a worldwide hit for the Police in 1983.

# Every bond you break Every step you take

# I'll be watching you... #

And at the heart of its appeal was its haunting guitar riff.

Well, the song's very simple. It starts on one chord...

Key of A. Goes to the relative minor.

F sharp minor.

Then up to the four chord.

D, E...

And then cunningly comes back to...

Now, I could have played that anyway.

It's a very standard bar.

That wouldn't have been the Police.

So the same chords...

..played like this...

I would have added a few effects

because we wanted that more distinctive sound.

I was really pleased with it.

I thought, oh, that guitar sounds great, you know.

Big, fat, thick sound, and it's very identifiable.

MUSIC: I'll Be Missing You by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans

Puff Daddy agreed.

14 years later, he took that guitar sound

and built I'll Be Missing You around it.

# Life ain't always what it seems to be

# Words can't express what you mean to me... #

And with a few tweaks to the lyrics,

the Police song, written by Sting

when he split up from his first wife,

was transformed into an uplifting tribute

to a dead friend and husband.

# Every move I make

# Every single day Every time I pray

# I'll be missing you... #

Recording it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be.

Because of the fact that it just felt joyful.

Knowing that that record was going to pay homage to his legacy,

pay homage to how much we all loved him personally

and how much the world had begun to love him

in such a short period of time.

That felt really right.

# On that morning

# When this life is over

# I know

# I'll see your face... #

No-one, though, remembered to tell the Police

what had happened to their song.

One of my kids who was about ten

said, "Hey, Dad, you're on the radio."

I listened, "What? What's this?"

"Eh?"

Turns out that the previous manager of the Police

had done this deal, unbeknown to us,

with this guy Puff Daddy.

So I was sort of incensed about it

because I don't think we ever really got paid what we should have,

because the guy sold 30 million singles off my guitar part.

# Every time I pray... #

For Faith Evans, the satisfaction offered by I'll Be Missing You

was a more personal one.

I found a way to express my own grief and feelings

and my own love for someone by the way of someone else's music.

You know, people definitely, to this very day,

always tell me that

that's one of the songs that has touched their lives the most.

And that's a huge accomplishment.

# Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air... #

In the 21st century,

the cover version seems in ruder health than ever before.

# ..saying Lord, I just don't care

# But you've got the love I need to see me through... #

# Sometimes it seems the going is just too rough

# And things go wrong no matter what I do... #

Florence and the Machine's 2009 version of You've Got The Love

by the Source featuring Candi Staton

showed there's little sign of the cover

losing its transformative power.

# ..You are my daily meal... #

When you choose a song to do of somebody else's,

you have to find a song that fits, that you've chosen yourself,

because you think it illustrates something about you or your life

or fits into your world as people see you as a musical artist.

The best cover versions are obviously bands or artists

that love the song and want to make it their own.

# ..Saying Lord, I just don't care... #

It's interesting when there's a definitive cover

and then it's interesting when a song turns into

a song that everybody wants to sing,

and they're two different things, and both beautiful.

# I heard there was a secret chord

# That David played... #

In recent years, one song has been covered more than any other,

becoming a 21st-century standard.

# ..do ya? #

Hallelujah has been sung by both the famous

and the hopeful.

# ..The minor fall and the major lift

# The baffled king composing Hallelujah... #

Yet the original recording of Hallelujah

was almost never released.

# Hallelujah... #

The song's writer was Leonard Cohen,

a poet who'd mesmerised the folk scene in the late '60s

with his lyrical tales of love and loss.

# And then leaning on your window sill

# He'll say one day you caused his will

# To weaken with your love and warmth and shelter... #

But by 1984, Cohen appeared out of tune with modern music,

a relic from the past,

and his label were concerned at the poor sales of his albums.

# He was just some Joseph... #

The new head of Columbia Records said to Leonard,

"We know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good."

So when Cohen went into the studio to record a new album,

his first in five years,

it was with a more commercial sound in mind.

# Now I've heard there was a secret chord

# That David played and it pleased the Lord

# But you don't really care for music, do ya? #

Hallelujah was the stand-out track on various positions.

# ..the fourth, the fifth... #

We had such confidence going in to Columbia about how good this was.

We just expected them to fall on the floor.

The head of Columbia Records listened to it and said,

"We can't release this."

And it was just shock.

I felt personally terrible.

I was so sure we were right - how can I have been so wrong?

I must have done this,

I must have dragged this guy in the toilet.

Hallelujah might have been lost to obscurity

if it hadn't been spotted by another cult artist.

I'd been to the Beacon Theatre and saw Leonard do Hallelujah there

with the big band, with the back-up singers,

and I'd never heard it before,

and I thought, "This is a little gem."

# Hallelujah

-# Hallelujah

-Hallelujah... #

I got hold of Leonard

and said, "Send me the lyrics."

And so I went to bed,

and I had one of those old spool fax machines,

and when I got up in the morning the floor was covered with fax paper.

There were 15 verses.

And I thought, "Wow, how am I going to do this?"

You know, they had special meaning for Leonard.

And I... I checked with him, I said, I can't sing these verses.

He said don't worry about it, you know.

So I slowly pared them down until I had about five or six.

# I heard there was a secret chord

# That David played and it pleased the Lord

# You don't really care for music, do ya? #

It's the closest to the religious ideal that I could come.

I mean, I was OK with singing Hallelujah,

but some of the other things in there?

That's where I left it.

So in the end, you did have a platform for the song,

a very simple version,

and you could concentrate on the sense and delivery of the voice.

# It goes like this The fourth, the fifth

# The minor fall, the major lift

# The baffled king composing Hallelujah... #

One of the challenges for an artist to cover a song

is finding the secret essence of the song.

And Leonard Cohen knows this, and he talks about this in Hallelujah.

He describes the secret chord,

and he goes on to say in the song,

which is effectively a song about songwriting,

he describes every chord as it's happening.

So he says, "It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,

"The minor third, the major lift."

It's all there, it's all deconstructed for you,

and yet that secret chord is ever-elusive,

and there's a special magic about it.

Perhaps it takes John Cale to go back to the song

to get past the very full production of Cohen's version

and to reduce the song to its barest parts.

And what he does is he lays the song bare

for loads of other artists to put their own stamp on it.

# There was a time when you let me know

# What's really going on below

# But now you never show that to me, do ya? #

I think I was at St Ann's and Jeff was playing that night,

and...

..he came running up to me and said, "Hey, man, I'm doing your version!"

And...his feet never left the ground most of the time.

He was always bouncy.

# Hallelujah, Hallelujah... #

It was great.

Yeah, with that voice, you can't go wrong.

# Hallelu-u-ujah... #

There's this wonderful version by Jeff Buckley

which is... It's like an emotional communion with the song.

# Maybe there's a god above

# All I've ever learned from love... #

It's so intimate you'd be hard-pushed to think it was covered.

And that's one of those beautiful moments

where a song suddenly comes out of the ether

and you suddenly see it for what it is.

# It's not a cry that you hear at night

# It's not somebody who's seen the light

# It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah... #

In 2008, Hallelujah finally reached the mainstream

when Simon Cowell chose it

as the showdown for that year's final of X Factor.

# Your faith was strong but you needed proof

# You saw her bathing on the roof... #

The challenge for the finalists was to make the song their own.

Especially hard given it wasn't their choice to sing it.

# She tied to you to her kitchen chair

# She broke your throne and she cut your hair... #

The arrangement for Hallelujah

was actually completely out of my control,

and we got told what we were singing for the winning single.

And I remember, I literally just stood there and went,

"Well, great. I'm not winning this show,

"cos there's no way I can do this song justice."

And I rang my mum and I was like, "Mum, the song's called Hallelujah,"

she goes, "Oh, I love that song!" And I went, "Yeah, you know,

"they've only got three verses out of the song,

"it's cool but I don't think I can do it," and she went, "What?"

So she gave me 20 minutes to compose myself on the phone

and I rang her back and said,

"You know what, Mum? I'm going to Whitney-fy the song."

# Hallelujah

# Hallelu... #

What does "Whitney-fy" mean?

There are two ways of doing this. One is through the arrangement

and the other is through the vocal performance itself.

And when it comes to the arrangement

we get this amazing cheap, but very effective,

trick of a key change.

So she starts off in F...

She's singing her verse...

Then we get this massive slowdown.

..and then the gear change.

And we've gone up a tone,

which in pop terms is really going for the jugular.

It means it's all about to kick off.

# Maybe there's a god above

# But all I've ever learned from love... #

And then she comes at us

with this incredible power ballad vocal performance.

Tons of melisma,

a fancy word for loads and loads of notes.

# It's a cold and it's a broken

# Hallelu-ujah... #

There's loads of backing vocals.

We go round the chorus twice, which is very pop.

# Hallelujah... #

None of the other versions have this.

You don't get a double chorus in the Jeff Buckley,

you never get melisma with Leonard Cohen.

# Hallelu-u-u-u... #

But the song somehow can take this treatment.

# Hallelujah... #

Alexandra Burke won X Factor singing Hallelujah

and became the first British woman

to sell a million copies of a single.

# u-u-u-ujah. #

And that Christmas, an unprecedented thing happened.

History has been made in the singles music chart this evening

when for the first time in half a century,

two versions of the same record made it to numbers one and two.

# Maybe there's a god above

# But all I've ever learned from love... #

At number one was Alexandra Burke with her X Factor winning recording.

And at number two, more than ten years after his tragic death

aged just 30, was Jeff Buckley.

And even more remarkably, at number 36

was the first-ever chart appearance

of the original Leonard Cohen version.

# Hallelujah... #

With Alexandra Burke's success,

Simon Cowell and his X Factor team

had taken Hallelujah to the bank.

# Hallelujah... #

And he wasn't he only one to reap a dividend.

Leonard Cohen was forced back on the road

after being ripped off by his former manager.

And the most anticipated song at his sold-out shows

was the one that nearly didn't make it,

but had now become a modern hymn.

# I've heard there was a secret chord

# That David played and it pleased the Lord

# But you don't really care for music, do you? #

I absolutely believe that covering a song is an art form.

You have to understand that this is your version of a fantastic song.

And obviously a song you love,

or you wouldn't waste your time covering it.

And as long as you loved what you've done,

that's all that matters.

MUSIC: Go Now by the Moody Blues

The pop charts have always been a jungle,

with winners and losers.

But the journey of a cover doesn't always end

when it leaves the charts.

Denny Laine from the Moody Blues and Bessie Banks

both sang Go Now in 1964.

In 51 years, despite both being associated with the song,

they never met.

Until now.

# Goodbye... #

-How are you?

-Oh, look who's here!

-It's me!

-Nice to meet you.

-Hello, darling.

Yeah.

What a pleasant surprise.

Thank you.

If it hadn't been for you, there would have been no Moody Blues,

-you know, at the top of the charts.

-Yeah.

We loved your record, we loved your version of it,

-and we tried to do it justice.

-You did.

-I just wish we'd met before.

-I do too.

-I wish I'd met Larry too.

He wrote some great songs.

# Before the tears start to fall

# I think you better go now

# Since you gotta go

# Oh, you better go now

# I don't want to see you go But darlin', you better go now. #