Phoebe Bridgers new album, Copycat Killer, dropped today: four tracks of Bridgers covering her own work, with an orchestral background. At least a couple of them are, to my ears, more satisfying than the originals.
Sometimes covers, whether from the original artist like this (and Joni Mitchell’s orchestral covers of her own classics), of by others, can be improvements over the original: Jonatha Brooke’s 2004 cover of The Alan Parsons Project’s 1982 Eye in the Sky, for example, is clearly an improvement (although the original has its place in the 1980s musical canon).
Randy Newman’s original I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today, you would think, is impossible to top. Did Sidsel Endresen and Bugge Wesseltoft’s cover do it? Perhaps not. But their cover is wonderful nonetheless.
Depending on your tastes, you might find Eddie Berman and Laura Marling’s cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark better than the original. Or you might find the mere suggestion sacrilege.
Others?
