Difference in Repetition: Cover Songs That Transform the Original

Tori Amos, “Losing My Religion”

“Losing My Religion” makes my list at least in part due to the transformation the song undergoes in Tori Amos’s hands. REM’s original version is oddly upbeat in relation to the lyrics. It is in a minor key, and the song works—there is a reason for its success—but it’s not for nothing that it also works pretty damn well if you transpose it to a major key.

Amos strips the song down to an arrangement that consists solely of vocals and piano. The way in which she inflects the lyrics and punctuates them with notes that are sometimes sparse and sometimes robust creates a version of “Losing My Religion” that really brings the sense of loss to the fore.

You probably have to like Tori Amos to appreciate this cover, as the style is distinctively hers. But if you don’t, I hardly know what to say to you, and if you somehow haven’t heard her music before, I think this is as good of a place to start as any.

1000 Homo DJs (with Trent Reznor), “Supernaut”

1000 Homo DJs released all of two singles in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. The second was this cover of “Supernaut” by Black Sabbath. Or perhaps I should say that this version was not quite that second single, as record label issues kept the version with Trent Reznor’s vocals from the original release. This version was released, however, on the Black Box—Wax Trax! boxset that came out in 1994, which is when I first heard it.

It is not all that different from Sabbath’s original in terms of the pace of the song, or even the guitar riffs (though more distortion has been added here). What makes the track stand out are the industrial style drums and the addition of dialogue snippets/sample of unknown origin. It is really the opening bars in particular—the spoken words about music encouraging drug use beginning to be accentuated by metallic drum machine sounds, then kicking into an incredibly heavy version of Sabbath’s classic riff—that make this stand out as one of my favorite covers.

Brass Against (ft. Sophia Urista), “The Pot”

Tool is a band whose music is so distinctive and complex that I would mostly say that one should not even attempt to cover their songs. In fact, I have heard several artists cover songs like “Sober” over the years and I have always basically thought that these versions were gimmicky at best, or just failures at worst. Or, well, I guess there is a group in the middle of people who have managed to perform renditions of Tool songs that are just fine. You played the song, good for you (no sarcasm intended—Tool songs are hard!), but that’s about it.

Standing in stark contrast is the cover of “The Pot” performed by Brass Against. The group consists primarily of brass instruments (trombones, trumpets, tubas, etc.), although there is also saxophone (which is technically a woodwind even if it is made from brass), drums, and a guitar. But the guitar hardly drives the thing. Rather, it is the brass ensemble that recreates the complex rhythms of Tool’s song, along with the most metal baritone sax I have ever heard (shout-out to Andrew Gutauskas!).

Brass Against has covered other Tool songs as well, but “The Pot” stands out to me in part because of that baritone sax performance, and in part due to Sophia Urista’s vocals. I’m a huge fan of Maynard James Keenan, and a large part of why I tend to be down on Tool covers is probably the fact that most vocalists just can’t live up to what he has done on the original track. Urista does, however. She doesn’t simply mimic Maynard’s style, though she does hit the same notes in more or less the same rhythm. Still, she makes the song her own. The screams are her own; the emotion is her own; and she makes Brass Against’s cover of “The Pot” gel into something truly special.