Covering Canada

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.

The best, worst and strangest foreign covers of Canadian songs

By Greig Dymond, CBC News

Every July 1, millions of Canadians mark the achievements of the Fathers of Confederation by consuming alcoholic beverages and cranking up the tunes. We can be justifiably proud, having always punched above our weight class when it comes to producing beer and singer-songwriters.

For decades, musicians around the world have reinterpreted English-Canadian pop-rock classics, and the results range from profoundly moving to extremely irritating. For your Canada Day listening pleasure, here’s a sampling of Canadian hits covered by artists from Britain, the U.S. and Australia.

The Good:

John Cale, Hallelujah and Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

Cohen’s original appeared on his 1984 album Various Positions. It has become one of his most enduring songs (and has escaped critically unscathed from appearances on the soundtracks to The West Wing, The O.C. and Shrek). While John Cale’s cover version has fewer vocal pyrotechnics than Buckley’s, both are stunningly powerful renditions that have perhaps received even more attention than Cohen’s.

The Donnas, Safety Dance (Men Without Hats)

The biggest hit by Montreal synth-pop legends Men Without Hats has turned into an all-purpose ’80s punchline; it’s been skewered on virtually every zeitgeist-tracking TV comedy, from South Park to The Simpsons to Family Guy. Last year, The Donnas – a guitar-driven, all-female band out of California – came along to resuscitate the song’s reputation with this spirited, glam-influenced cover.

Thom Yorke, After the Gold Rush (Neil Young)

Along with Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen, Neil Young is the Canadian artist who has inspired the most cover versions. Performers ranging from Sonic Youth to Waylon Jennings to Cassandra Wilson have all had a go at his incredibly rich catalogue. One wouldn’t immediately associate the densely layered sound of Radiohead with Neil, but singer Thom Yorke’s ability to emote in the high register helps him carry off this reading of the enviro-friendly After the Gold Rush.

Johnny Cash. (Associated Press)

Johnny Cash, If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)

Taken from the Man in Black’s posthumous 2006 album, American V: A Hundred Highways, this Gordon Lightfoot cover is a stripped-down masterpiece — yet another stellar product of the collaboration between Cash and producer Rick Rubin. The country legend’s voice is utterly frail, but his half-sung, half-spoken narrative about a flawed man looking back at a failed relationship is shiver-inducing. (Cash wins Canada Day bonus points for having reinterpreted songs by Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Ian & Sylvia, Hank Snow and The Band.)

Elvis Presley, Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)/Snowbird (Anne Murray)/Until It's Time for You To Go (Buffy Ste. Marie)

Save for Johnny Cash, no other major international star relied on CanCon as heavily as The King. Let’s face it: Presley always relied on other people’s material, but these three selections from the early ’70s represent a period when there was still a modicum of quality control in his work. (It would be a few years before he’d succumb to onstage karate-chop theatrics and pharmaceutical-inspired bombast.) Elvis always claimed that Anne Murray was his favourite singer, and he provides a solid reading of Gene MacLellan’s Snowbird. As well, he gave us jaunty takes on Lightfoot’s drifter anthem Early Morning Rain and Buffy Ste. Marie’s Until It’s Time for You To Go.

Herbie Hancock (feat. Corinne Bailey Rae), River (Joni Mitchell)

Throughout her career, Joni Mitchell has inspired awe, respect and countless covers from a disparate group of musicians, including Tom Rush, Bjork, Prince and Elvis Costello. This Herbie Hancock/Corinne Bailey Rae collaboration was the title track for the jazz legend’s recent Grammy-winning tribute album, River: The Joni Letters. It’s a beautifully restrained version of Mitchell’s song about losing love in California (and being homesick for the colder climes of her native land).

Bright Eyes, Mushaboom (Feist)

This slightly countrified version of one of Leslie Feist’s breakthrough hits comes from Bright Eyes’ 2005 album Motion Sickness: Live Recordings. Feist, who was born in Nova Scotia, named the song after a village in that province. Bright Eyes delivers a charming version of the track, although singer Conor Oberst can’t seem to bring himself to enunciate the distinctly Canadian title.

We Five, You Were on My Mind (Ian and Sylvia)

Ian & Sylvia – the best-looking and most popular folk duo Canada has ever produced – were among the first homegrown musicians to receive the cover treatment from international performers in the 1960s. A version of You Were on My Mind became a smash U.S. hit in 1965 for the eternally peppy San Francisco rock combo We Five. Their interpretation omits the original’s line, “I got drunk, and I got sick”; alas, such admissions weren’t welcome on the pop charts at that time.

The Bad:

DJ Sammy, Heaven and Rage, Run to You (both Bryan Adams)

For almost 30 years, Bryan Adams has delivered two kinds of product with ruthless efficiency: the Emotive Power Ballad (Exhibit A: Heaven) and the Fist-Pumping Rocker (Exhibit B: Run to You). No one wants to hear his canon reinterpreted for the dance floor, but that’s precisely what the long-forgotten DJ Sammy and Rage tried to achieve with these pieces of techno sludge. Suitable only for consumption after one too many mojitos at a depressing Club Med orientation event.Fergie. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Fergie, Barracuda (Heart)

The woman who brought you the narcissistic My Humps and Fergalicious delivers a wretched reworking of Heart’s Led Zeppelin-influenced classic. In the video clip, Fergie appears to be trying to channel both Axl Rose and gymnast Nadia Comaneci. Sadly, it doesn’t work.

Starz on 54, If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)

Steeped in folk tradition, Lightfoot is an unlikely candidate to provide the theme for a cinematic tribute to the most debauched discotheque of all time. But that’s what happened in 1998, with this misguided attempt to transform the reflective If You Could Read My Mind into a dance anthem for the film 54. The disco makeover comes close to succeeding at times, but never achieves full diva liftoff (see Bryan Adams, above).

Rascal Flatts, Life Is a Highway (Tom Cochrane)

When people look back at American pop culture during the George W. Bush era, they’ll look back at Rascal Flatts, a hugely successful country group from Nashville. That trio created this stultifying reading of Tom Cochrane’s joyous ode to gas-guzzling for the 2006 film Cars. Perhaps the most faithful, note-for-note cover version in musical history; starkly unoriginal and unnecessary given the sing-along perfection of the original.

Lenny Kravitz, American Woman (The Guess Who)

Rock’s blandest artist manages to sap all the life out of one of the great Canadian singles. This Guess Who song had it all: a stunning vocal from Burton Cummings, that irresistible Bachman hook and some anti-American lyrics that were mildly controversial in the Vietnam War era. Kravitz’s recipe: reduce the energy level, preen, add water and mix for four minutes. Voila: a turgid cover of a Canuck classic! Serves millions easily.

Leonard Nimoy, Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)

The musically talentless Nimoy actually managed to parlay his success as Spock on TV’s Star Trek into a modest recording career in the ’60s and ’70s, and even had a minor hit with the track Highly Illogical. Given his emotionless small-screen persona, it perhaps made sense for him to tackle a song that required him to look – logically, of course — at love from “both sides now” and confess, “I really don’t know love at all.” This impossibly stiff “reading” of Mitchell’s wistful masterpiece is a low point in U.S.-Canada relations.

Toyah Wilcox, Echo Beach (Martha and the Muffins)

In the mid-’80s, English pop star Toyah Wilcox transformed Martha and the Muffins’ new-wave ditty about ennui into an ennui-inspiring ordeal. Somehow, it cracked the British Top 50. The video features a puzzling anti-office technology theme, a drenched-in-pastel aesthetic inspired by The 20-Minute Workout and some of the most hideous dance moves you’ve ever seen.

Young Divas, Turn Me Loose (Loverboy)

Really now: Who needs a cover of Loverboy’s Turn Me Loose? Back in 1981, Vancouver’s Mike Reno provided the high-pitched vocal of this ditty, demanding a release from society’s (and his lover’s) constraints. When he claimed, “I gotta do it my way/Or no way at all,” we believed him. This 2007 version, from a bevy of former Australian Idol contestants dubbed Young Divas, is far less convincing. Despite the 21st-century addition of a mid-song cameo by New Zealand rapper Savage, this fails to evoke the anarchic energy of Loverboy’s spandex reign.

The Strange:

Kurt Cobain. (Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)

Nirvana, Seasons in the Sun (Terry Jacks)

B.C.’s Terry Jacks had a worldwide hit in 1974 with this insanely catchy tune, originally penned by Jacques Brel and translated into (somewhat sappy) English by poet Rod McKuen. It was a profoundly disconcerting listening experience: a bubblegum song about dying. For some reason, in 1993, the lads from Nirvana decided to swap instruments and ratchet up the tune’s inherent bleakness. Somehow, it works. This is no kitsch-fest. The refrain “it’s hard to die” is especially resonant, given Cobain’s subsequent end.

Nazareth, This Flight Tonight (Joni Mitchell)

Joni Mitchell’s 1971 album, Blue, is for many fans the high-water mark in her career: quiet, confessional songs that constitute a folk-rock masterpiece. On their 1973 cover of This Flight Tonight, Scottish rockers Nazareth dispense with Mitchell’s acoustic sound (and any notion of subtlety altogether) and transform the track into a balls-to-the-wall showcase for Dan McCafferty’s throat-shredding vocals. In Nazareth’s hands, the line “You’ve got the lovin’ that I like” sounds downright lewd.

Rolling Stones, Anybody Seen My Baby? (k.d. lang — sort of)

This isn’t a cover version per se, but a subconscious “homage” to k.d. lang’s 1992 mega hit, Constant Craving. The Stones were about to release Anybody Seen My Baby? on the 1997 album Bridges to Babylon when Keith Richards’s daughter informed her old man about the striking similarities between the choruses of the two tunes. In order to avoid any My Sweet Lord-style copyright dustup, rock’s elder statesmen decided to give equal billing to lang and her co-writer, Ben Mink. In all likelilhood, this will be the only song in eternity to bear the songwriting credit “Jagger/Richards/lang/Mink.” Mick and Keef claimed never to have heard k.d.’s song.

Greig Dymond is a producer for CBC Radio.

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