Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today let's go into another Three Tune Tuesday post.
As always, thanks to @ablaze for making this series. Lots of people participate in it! Follow the tags to find a ton of good music recommendation.
Just yesterday I was reading a piece on Frank Sinatra. I don't remember how I even found it. It may have been one of those curated articles that Pocket suggests when you open Firefox (I really should turn that option off, because the suggested articles are often distracting).
At any rate, in the piece it talked about how like many singers at the time Sinatra at first dismissed the Beatles and rock n roll as a fad, then mocked them, but finally accepted them and even acknowledged their songwriting ability. It went on to say that he publicly declared Harrison's Something as the most beautiful love song of the past 50 years and started performing it himself.
I knew that he performed the song often at his concerts, but I didn't know he thought so highly of it. And that right there inspired me to dive into covers of that song. I thought today we'd look at some of them.
To behind with, though I imagine almost all of you have heard it, here is the Beatles original:
I include that because of the original video, but the official 2019 remix is superior in every single way. Go listen to it.
Frank Sinatra
Since he's the one that inspired me onto this little musical journey, let's start off with his version of the song.
I usually like Sinatra, but I think he slows it down too much here. He should have done more of a swing version. We get hints of what that might have sounded like in the above video. Still pretty good, though.
Interestingly, Harrison himself started adopting a one of Sinatra's lyric tweaks when he later performed it live (the line "You stick around, Jack ...").
By the way, Elvis also enjoyed the song
Bob Dylan
Dylan was famously good friends with Harrison. They hung out a lot together and later formed their own superband. Dylan did a very Dylan cover of the song shortly after Harrison's death. It's pretty catchy!
Joe Cocker
After Harrison wrote the song, he didn't think the Beatles would let him play it and didn't think they could do it successfully anyway, so he offered it to Joe Cocker. Luckily for all of us, the Beatles did go with it. But Cocker's version is pretty great as well!
Every time I watch Joe Cocker performing I can't help but think of John Belushi.
So what's your favorite?
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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Mastodon. |
