by Joe Miller
A few years ago, my wife and I saw Morgan James in concert at the Hamilton in D.C. – a relatively intimate venue that puts performers on a low stage just a few feet from the audience.
James is tiny – “she’s not big as a minute” is how Caroline put it when James first walked on stage – but she has a big voice and a huge range.
Like many people, I first encountered James’ music through her collaboration with Postmodern Jukebox – a jazz collective known for covering contemporary songs in older musical styles.
With Postmodern Jukebox, James performs a cover of Aerosmith’s “Dream On” in a ‘60s orchestral soul style. After dozens of listens, I still get chills when James holds that high note (the internet tells me it’s an E6) for eight beats.
I have a weakness for what I call weird covers – songs that rework something familiar into an entirely new music genre.
Johnny Cash’s rendition of “Hurt” is arguably the pinnacle of this sort of genre switcheroo. Cash transforms an industrial metal anthem of an angry, self-destructive youth into a country ballad of melancholy, heartache and loss. I love the original. Cash’s cover is transcendent.
There are plenty of covers that are so iconic we sometimes forget that they are covers. Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie.” Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower.”
But my favorites are covers of songs that were already hits.
Disturbed’s metal cover of “Land of Confusion” is loads better than the original. The same is true of The Atari’s guitar-heavy “The Boys of Summer.” Ryan Adams’ alt-country “Wonderwall” doesn’t make me want to jam pencils into my ears.
Every song Chris Cornell covered is better than the original. Ditto for any Beatles song performed by literally anybody else.
(I’m going to get letters about that last one.)
Film covers are pretty common, too—though we usually call those adaptations or remakes rather than covers.
These are also best when they’re translated to new genres. It happens a lot with Shakespeare. Think 10 Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew, set in high school) or Anyone But You (Much Ado About Nothing, set as rom-com) or The Lion King (a Disneyfied Hamlet).
Again, though, my favorites are the really weird ones.
The 2002 film Adaptation is an adaptation of the 1996 book, The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean. The film, written by Charlie Kaufman, is about a character named Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage) who is engaged to write a screenplay about a book titled The Orchid Thief, written by a character named Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep).
The film is even weirder and more meta than that description. (Fictional Kaufman discusses a possible ending for his film-within-a-film, then discarded it as too contrived. That discarded ending becomes the actual ending of Adaptation.)
Books that are covers/ adaptations/remakes of other books are rarer, but they do happen.
Barbara Kingsolver won a Pulitzer Prize for Demon Copperhead, her 2022 retelling of David Copperfield set in the mountains of Appalachia.
Wicked, the Broadway hit turned blockbuster movie, is an adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s novel of the same name. The book is part of a genre called fractured fairy tales – works that retell a familiar story from a different perspective.
Maguire himself has written several fractured fairy tales, including Mirror, Mirror and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.
A number of writers have retold Greek myths from a feminist perspective. Madeline Miller’s Circe, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Claire Haywood’s Daughters of Sparta, Natalie Haynes’ Pandora’s Jar, and Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne are just a few examples from this growing subgenre.
If you’re looking for something a little lighter, John Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation is a delightful retelling of H. Beam Piper’s 1962 novel, Little Fuzzy.
I’m just about to start reading A Far Better Thing, which reimagines A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton as a human slave taken by fairies, now plotting revenge against Charles Darnay, the changeling left in his stead.
It’s a slightly absurd remix of my favorite Dickens novel. Which makes it right up my alley.
joe.miller@fountaindigitalconsulting.com
