Why girl groups? Why girl groups indeed. While looking up info for “Out In The Streets,” I came across this somewhat mysterious post about Pitchfork’s 200 Greatest Songs of the 60s list. I say the post is mysterious because it’s hard to pin down the credentials of the writer. We know what Pitchfork writers are like; is this guy just as young but far more knowledgable about motown and the British invasion, or was he (as is implied once or twice) an older person who actually listened to a bunch of these records when they first came out? Anyways, he remarks that the list is quite heavy on girl groups, and that in general we’ve suddenly become very good at digging up old classics from the period. Probably a lot of this has to do with Rhino’s giant compendium of all things girl group, a four disc box set compiling a huge amount of classics from the era. The author of the mysterious post approves of the girl group renaissance, though he does wonder about certain aspects of it:

more to the point: what the hell is up with the shangri-las? three songs!? “out in the streets” in the top 20!? not to mention the kinks’ “shangri-la” (#135), a mystifying selection that i really suspect might be the result of some kind of weird crossover sweep effect…. i guess i just don’t like the shangri-las as much as some people. or they’re somehow a lot more significant than i realized.

Nothing like using the words of a guy who’s probably much smarter than you to undercut your own post before you’ve even started. I happen to like “Out In The Streets,” though maybe it’s just because it’s one of the few songs whose lyrics I’ve actually paid attention to. “Out In The Streets” is basically the musical equivalent of “The Wild One,” the 1950s teen pulp classic with Marlon Brando as the leader of a biker gang who tears up a small town and almost hooks up with the innocent girl but drives off in the end. But on top of that, the Shangri-Las take the story of a guy who doesn’t belong in his girl’s world and turns it into a titanic (no pun intended) story of unrequited love and teenage heartbreak. When those strings kick in and Mary Weiss sings “I wish I didn’t care, I wish I never met him, they’re waiting out there, so I gotta set him free,” it’s like a tragedy for the ages. You wish your life was so deliciously melodramatic. Brilliant.

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.

If you don’t know who Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman are, you might recognize their alter egos: John Steed and Catherine Gale, the original swingin’ duo of The Avengers. Showing that tie-in merchandising and vertical integration were alive and well in the 60s, the powers behind the classy spy show decided its principal stars would be great on the radio as well as TV. Macnee and Blackman cut the ludicrous “Kinky Boots” on a single Saturday evening—or so the story goes. The resulting single release in 1964 managed to hit the top 5 in the UK, almost certainly riding the coattails of the ascendant Avengers platform—though there’s probably an element of unintentional humour that contributed to its success as well. 1964 was the last year Blackman was on the show, moving on to bigger and better things including a stint as Bond girl Pussy Galore. As for the Avengers, out went Cathy Gale and in came Emma Peel, leading the show to a new level of success both at home and in the States. “Kinky Boots” was quietly forgotten, a dusty relic of bad 60s marketing.

Until 1990, that is, when a BBC breakfast DJ named Simon Mayo decided the song needed a revival. During his five years hosting the Radio 1 breakfast show, Mayo made it a habit to play old pop oddities incessantly, which had the side effect of putting them on the charts—often after long absences from the spotlight. “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life,” Eric Idle’s cheerful crucifixion backing music, was reissued in September 1991—twelve years after Monty Python’s Life Of Brian came out—due to the song’s newfound popularity. Mayo featured the song on his show because he’d heard it used as a football chant. I can’t imagine what led him to revive “Kinky Boots,” but he started playing Macnee and Blackman’s ode to leather and lace in late 1990. Thus the song entered the UK charts for the second time in December 1990, almost three decades after its first stint.

Blackman did release an album of material later in the 60s, after her Pussy Galore role in Goldfinger. Macnee, however, stayed away from the recording studio. Blackman, in a 1983 interview, gives the likely reason: “Patrick said he had no sense of rhythm and couldn’t sing but we thought that was absolute nonsense until we actually got there and found it was absolutely true!”

If you’re not already convinced by Petra Haden’s uncanny ability to mimic an entire symphony of guitars, drums, horns and other assorted instruments, here’s the latest from her camp: a cover of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” recorded in a single afternoon. Since she put it on her site a while back, it’s gotten a fair amount of attention from the likes of Entertainment Weekly and the Globe and Mail. It’ll be interesting to see what she does if and when she decides to return to writing her own material; Haden’s gotten better at her acapella escapades since last year’s Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out, and “God Only Knows” is the most natural-sounding translation she’s put to tape yet. At this point, I can only guess that her next album of original material will represent a quantum leap over the still-charming Imaginaryland.

Though she could probably milk the covers angle a little more—for an extra treat, check out her version of “Thriller.” Yes, that Thriller.

Despite having French producer Bertrand Burgalat by her side, a suitably kitschy nom de plume for an identity, and a convincing command of the French language, April March isn’t actually of the Continent. The pop chanteuse has a much more interesting story; she’s really Elinor Blake, she hails from New York, and her last gig was as an animator with Spumco. Before illuminating the world of syrupy melodies and cooing French lyrics, Blake was busy creating the world of Ren and Stimpy. No simple pop tart, this one.

For her part, Blake’s pretty upfront about her dual identity. A lot of artists, when they put forth an identity so different from what you’d expect from the actual person underneath, stick to that identity as much as they can. Blake, on the other hand, doesn’t try to convince everyone her name is April, doesn’t pretend she’s French, and doesn’t disavow her animation past. Chrominance Decoder and Triggers, for Blake, are very much loving and informed tributes to the era of French ye-ye, and she gets a lot of the details right—everything from the lovely cover design to the music itself, which sounds (to these untrained ears, I’ll admit) like higher-fidelity versions of the real thing.

In various interviews, Blake talks about her surprise at the warm welcome she received from Burgalat and company. When she arrived, the retro pop revival had long passed in France, and they found it hard to believe anyone—let alone an American—would be genuinely interested in the likes of Francoise Hardy and Jane Birkin. But with several albums under her belt and no signs of letting up, Blake—excuse me, April March—has proven that she’s serious about her devotion to the simple pleasures of French pop. Lucky for us that we get to reap the benefits.

(p.s. Yes, “Chrominance Decoder” is where I got the term “chrominance” from. And for the record, chrominance refers to color fidelity, much as luminance measures light intensity.)

Kahimi Karie may as well be Takako Minekawa. Quirky alternative Japanese pop singer: check. Sweet, girlish vocals: check. Effortlessly cool electropop soundscapes: check. Occasional production work by Cornelius: check. On the other hand, given that basic template, the two have pretty different styles; whereas Minekawa is a bit quirkier and leans more towards the electronic side of things, Karie is a bit more europop. Towards that end, Karie moved to Paris and collaborated with the likes of Tahiti 80, producer Julien Ribot, pop singer Katerine, and Momus. Karie also seems to have made a bigger impact on the Japanese audience; she hosted her own radio show and wrote the theme song to Chibi Maruko Chan, a popular animated show—beating Puffy AmiYumi’s Teen Titans contribution by almost a decade. She’s also more closely aligned with the Shibuya-Kei scene, having worked with members of Pizzicato Five.

Her sound isn’t quite as jam-packed as P5’s, but it has that same intangible sense of cool about it—a distinctly late-90s, Japanese sort of postmodern retro chic (in other words, postmodern by way of Austin Powers more than Foucault). Karie isn’t quite as much an independent as Minekawa, and so there aren’t as many odd elements like a penchant for Kraftwerk-like keyboards to cause confusion. “Sleepwalking” is a simple concept executed very well: slick, narcotic atmospherics with breathy vocals on top. Karie can change gears quite easily, though; many of her songs are more overtly influenced by the likes of Gainsbourg and French garage rock. But it’s the more ethereal compositions, like “Sleepwalking” and her contribution to the second Katamari Damacy soundtrack, “Blue Orb,” that work the best; less self-conscious, less obviously the product of an outside producer, and less obviously aping an earlier style, it’s much easier to enjoy “Sleepwalking” on its own terms.

Somewhere in the same universe as Pizzicato Five but with a slightly more eccentric orbit, Takako Minekawa practiced a more overtly electronic form of pop music that, as time went on, also became more ethereal and narcotic. Minekawa’s early work, of which a helium-voiced cover of “Drive My Car” is somewhat typical, plays heavily to the cute Japanese pop ingenue stereotype. But by the time of Cloudy Cloud Calculator, a good four years into her music career, Minekawa had embarked on a sound that, while still upbeat and bouncy, resembled Kraftwerk more than Puffy AmiYumi.

“Fantastic Voyage” is a cut off Fun9, the album she released a year later. By this point, Minekawa had smoothed out the more staccato, blip-bleepy elements, thanks partially to production work by future husband Cornelius and DJ Me DJ You. “Fantastic Voyage” is the IMAX experience to Cloudy Cloud Calculator’s fifteen-inch rabbit-ear TV. It’s a fully realized dreamscape, peppered with fairy-tale samples referring to rare medicinal plants and magical forests. Oddly compelling and hypnotic, “Fantastic Voyage” may very well be Minekawa’s high point: a perfect amalgam of all her prior tendencies, arranged just so to create an otherworldly sort of experience.

After her marriage to Keigo Oyamada, aka Cornelius, in 2000, Minekawa seems to practically disappear. There’s a handwritten message on her site from 2002, but since it’s in Japanese I can’t make heads or tails of it. A farewell retirement note? A promise of more to come in the future? A grocery list? If only there were more clues.