07 February 2006

cover your head

every little thing he does is magic : shawn colvin
click on the couple below to listen

Okay, so we are still in the covers phase. Listen to this one by Shawn Colvin from her 1994 album Cover Girl, which came two years before she hit the big time with A Few Small Repairs. The original by The Police is still eminently better, but I like the simple, unpretentious arrangement of this version. In fact, it would take a major fuck-up for me not to like a professional cover of this song, which I love for its lyrics. I can even specify which line is my favorite: It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.

I find that line very graphic, and I take it almost in isolation from the rest of the lyrics. This may not be the intended meaning when Sting wrote it, but I think that line is a great analogy for someone who gives so much in a relationship but still ends up getting the raw end of the deal. And yet there he is, devoted as a dog. Another line I like from this song: I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day, And ask her if she'll marry me in some old fashioned way. I thought that was maddeningly obsessive, and I thought I was the only one who thought so, so imagine my surprise when that line was actually uttered by a stalker in a movie. Remember Conspiracy Theory? The paranoid Mel Gibson character recited that line to Julia Roberts in a train station, if I remember it right. And yet, it's Every Breath You Take that came to be known as "the stalker song."

1 comment:

  1. i dunno if you've heard of this filipino duo (with a band) called mymp (which stands for 'make your momma proud'). they're fond of doing covers as well and they did one for this great song. you should hear it too. and speaking of covers, have you heard of 'ultraelectromagneticjam'? it's a tribute to the eraserheads.

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