I planned the month of covers well in advance, thinking that the year-in-review session was always so successful, and perhaps it was because I actually thought about it beforehand. So if you were wondering, this post is coincidental. If not, let me explain.

This is Ivy’s cover of the Go-Betweens’ “Streets Of Your Town,” and like so many covers, I have neither heard the original nor anything else of the Go-Betweens’. So this post was largely going to be about Ivy, the band I do know and appreciate. I was going to tell you that Guestroom was the album that convinced me Ivy was more than just a lightweight pop band; though I love “This Is The Day” and “Lucy Doesn’t Love You,” they seemed more likely to be flukes rather than a genuine indicator of what Ivy was all about. In a sense, I was right; the horn-backed jangly guitar pop song is just one of Ivy’s many weapons. I just didn’t realize that Ivy was so consistent with the quality and the catchiness, two elements I thought would be in short supply.

But the Go-Betweens are largely an unknown quantity to me. I know a couple of things; they’re a highly influential Australian band, like an Australian Velvet Underground. Bono’s apparently got a Go-Betweens song in his top 3 songs of all time; Belle and Sebastian and Edwyn Collins, among others, loved the band to bits. The band managed to convince Sleater-Kinney to help back them on their much-celebrated reunion album in 2000 after 12 years of inaction. “I was thrilled that a band as good as that would cover our songs,” Robert Forster said once of Ivy’s cover; I can only guess that Ivy—and the many other bands who call them an influence—would say the honour was all theirs.

There’s a sad postscript to this story, though, and it’s the reason for the odd note above. About two weeks ago, Grant McLennan, one half of the core of the Go-Betweens, died in his sleep at the young age of 48. Forster has confirmed that the band will not go on without his partner in crime. The Go-Betweens were so beloved that no less than the parliament of Australia recognized McLennan’s passing. As Brian Boyd put it in his tribute in the Irish Times, “Cattle and Cane was recently voted one of the ‘10 greatest Australian songs of all time’, which is patent nonsense. It is the greatest Australian song of all time.”

Q: Is The Boys are Back In Town a cover or your own song?
A: Look for Thin Lizzy at your local record store!

There are several schools of thought on how to do a cover properly. Terms like “faithful” and “accurate” characterize one school, the reverent redux: you are merely the performer channeling the greatness of the original artist, and your rendition must add tastefully to the body of work while remaining true to the original intent. I cannot, however, actually think of very many covers that fall into this category intentionally—probably because it’s a boring way to do a cover. If there are covers that do stick closely to the original template, it’s often seen more as a sign of weak thinking or lack of creativity. The outliers—covers that actually pull off the feat of remaining very similar to the original, and yet adding something new—are pleasures in their own right. The Lucksmiths did a cover of the Smiths’ “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” that I think is very faithful, and yet improved through the slight reinterpretation and the addition of a second, female vocalist.

But then there’s the other school of thought that says, screw fidelity and reverence—if I want to make a samba cover of Kraftwerk or an alt-country cover of Snoop Dogg, that’s my damned business. Often these sorts of covers are high in kitsch (Mike Flowers Pops doing Oasis’ “Wonderwall”) or irony (Nina Gordon doing an acoustic Lilith Fair-esque version of “Straight Outta Compton”). The great thing about so many of the covers the Cardigans have done, then, is that while they fall into the latter category when it comes to sound, they are at all times quite serious about their intentions. When they put their great resort lounge version of “Iron Man” on First Band On The Moon, it wasn’t because they thought it’d be funny to take the piss out of Black Sabbath (or at least not entirely); it was also because they genuinely liked Black Sabbath. And so it is with this version of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town.” Removed from the 70s stadium rock context, you get two things from the Cardigans version. One, the Cardigans were great at what they used to do, which was light, airy, lounge pop. They certainly had an ear for the right hook and the right arrangement, and it shows with their Thin Lizzy cover—so well done it may as well be their own song (hence the opening quote).

But the second thing that makes this cover so great is that for all the magic dust the Cardigans have sprinkled on “The Boys Are Back In Town,” it’s still quite obvious once you pay attention that it’s the old Thin Lizzy song underneath. It’s a testament to how strong the underlying song is, that a Swedish pop band can rework the song drastically and still make it work so well. It makes the Cardigans look good, but it also makes Thin Lizzy look good. And that’s the true sign of a band who’s serious about their covers.

Having already written about Saint Etienne’s signature song, it seemed like a good idea to finally post that “karaoke version” of Kylie Minogue’s for comparison. “Nothing Can Stop Us” was the first track Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs recorded with Sarah Cracknell, who was then supposed to be just another in a long line of guest vocalists—Moira Lambert was the woman behind “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” the dance redo of the Neil Young song. That song was essentially recorded on a whim; the boys had some studio time and decided to see what they could put together. The other song from that session was also a cover, mainly because Stanley and Wiggs hadn’t bothered penning any actual material before heading into the recording booth. “Nothing Can Stop Us” was one of the first songs the band had written themselves, and became the formula upon which Saint Etienne’s early career would be based. But the band didn’t bother spending a whole lot of time on the track: “from the days when we recorded a song on Monday, mixed it on Tuesday, released it on Wednesday, buried it on Sunday,” as they put it.

Kylie Minogue’s first single with the star production/songwriting team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman was similarly haphazard. The team had forgotten the Australian soap star had flown into London for the recording session, and wrote her first British single in 40 minutes while she waited. After “I Should Be So Lucky” dominated the British charts for over a month, Mike Stock went back to Melbourne to apologize profusely to Minogue and ask if she’d come back to have another go. Thus began a somewhat stormy relationship between Minogue and the trio, which ended in 1993 with Minogue wishing to escape the constraints of the formula Stock, Aitken and Waterman had imposed on her.

She moved to Deconstruction Records and began running the show herself artistically; her self-titled 1994 album thus became a restatement of purpose for the pop star. One of her first recordings for Deconstruction was a cover of “Nothing Can Stop Us,” eventually backing first single “Confide In Me.” For any pop star to cover Saint Etienne—not the most commercially successful group even at the height of their powers—is a bit of a surprise, and evidence that Minogue wasn’t just an airheaded pop singer. Minor as it was, “Nothing Can Stop Us” was also one of the first left turns in a career surprisingly full of them, from a duet with Nick Cave to several odd vocal turns on Towa Tei records.

As the closest thing Australia and Great Britain has had to a home-grown Madonna, Minogue has always managed to appear in control of her own destiny, even during the low periods when she spent little time on the pop charts. And in a very small sense, it all began with a song called “Nothing Can Stop Us.” Fitting.

Today marks the beginning of “oh man, I need an awesome gimmick theme to fill up content for another month” month—or as I like to call it when other people are around, “covers month.”

We’ll start with France Gall and April March in a tale of two singers. Gall was one of the leading stars of the French pop movement in the 60s, consorting with the likes of Serge Gainsbourg and Michel Berger. Her origins, however, were much more humble; the woman formerly known as Isabelle Gall released her first single in 1963, just a month shy of her sweet sixteen. Her father filled in for many of the duties, including writing some of her songs, and prior to her solo career Isabelle had played with her brothers in a small band. On the other hand, first looks are deceiving. For instance, Gall’s father wasn’t just any old supportive dad; he was Robert Gall, an accomplished songwriter who had penned songs for Edith Piaf. And Gall’s first single managed to sell 200,000 copies in France, catapulting her instantly into the limelight. “Laisser Tomber Les Filles” was another one of her Gainsbourg-penned early singles, though it’s been overshadowed by “Les Sucrettes” and “Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son.”

But a lot of great covers come from forgotten classics placed in the right hands, and you could do much worse than Elinor Blake, better known as April March. For a French pop revivalist, Blake is perhaps not what you’d expect; her previous claim to fame was an animator on Ren and Stimpy (though she’s played in other bands) and she wasn’t even French. Her interest in all things ye-ye was confusing to the French producers she met, many of them wondering if she was serious about performing in a style many French people saw as a relic at best, and as a faint embarassment at worst. Of course, April March was indeed serious—”Laisser Tomber Les Filles” was one of March’s first tentative steps towards reviving the French pop sound of the 60s, and it’s a spectacular remake. Records like Gainsbourgsion and Paris In April (which also featured an English version of “Laisser Tomber Les Filles” called “Chick Habit”) convinced Bertrand Burgalat that April March was the real deal, and in 1999 the two created Chrominance Decoder. The rest is history.