#980. Lineage of Song “American Woman”

The Guess Who

Lenny Kravitz

Here’s one I always thought was ridiculous; ridiculous in how classic rock fans tried so hard to reject the Kravitz take, which is kind of how classic rock fans in general (the journalists especially), downplayed the achievements of the last several generations of rockstars and bands, which was probably the leading factor in rock’s current status as close to invisible in pop culture, which for years seemed utterly impossible. History doesn’t end just because you wish your favorites always maintain the status you assigned them when you were young. Music, as with everything, keeps moving forward. If your favorites remain good in new context, great! But don’t sit there denying good new things because you’re scared the good old things somehow can’t compete, because that’s the actual message you’re sending posterity.
 

#979. Lineage of Song: “Wanna Be Startin Somethin”

 

Michael Jackson, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”

Rihanna, “Don’t Stop the Music”

Here’s one that’s more remix than remake, but it all works, the way music can organically evolve, like anything, given the right inspiration.

#978. Lineage of Song: "Everybody Knows"

 

Leonard Cohen

Sigrid

This is kind of funny timing (I obviously didn’t do so well with a certain national anthem that’ll show up well past, say, Independence Day). (Here I should remind readers out there I generally compose these things well in advance as far as selecting songs and compiling videos.) I just saw Superman last night, in opening weekend. It’s pretty great, though certainly a very different cinematic vision of the character than we’ve ever seen, a huge contrast with its immediate predecessor, last officially depicted in Justice League (though he cameos in Black Adam, very very ironically similar to the new film). The complicated production of Justice League famously led to different cuts. The theatrical version, which this song opens, was completed by Joss Whedon, though the song and moment feels very much like Zack Snyder’s work. In Snyder’s version the song has been omitted.

#977. Lineage of Song: "Desolation Row"

 

Bob Dylan

My Chemical Romance

My Chemical Romance doesn’t get nearly enough love, being a latter day rock band (seriously, The Black Parade is great). Gerard Way also made a great career for himself in comics.

#976. Lineage of Song: “Wild Wild West”

 

Stevie Wonder, “I Wish”

Will Smith

When Will Smith’s movie career exploded, initially he kept his rap career going steady right beside it, this time as a solo artist (he was originally the Fresh Prince alongside Jazzy Jeff). The success of Men in Black in particular led to Wild Wild West, a movie that proved there were limits to his appeal. But the song was still good!

#975. Lineage of Song: “People Are Strange”

 

The Doors

The Dead South

This one’s here strictly to showcase how awesome the Dead South is. Obviously the Doors. Both. It’s a great one-two punch.

#974. Lineage of Song: “You Are My Sunshine”

 

Pine Ridge Boys

Gene Autry

Bing Crosby 

Doris Day

Ray Charles

Johnny Cash

The Dead South

Here’s a little old school. 

#973. Lineage of Song: “Thunderstruck”

 

AC/DC

2Cellos

This one’s just one of the fun ones. Instrumental covers, especially ones outside of the box, will always be worth it.

#972. Lineage of Song: “Raspberry Beret”

 

Prince

Warren Zevon

Here’s another I can’t believe I didn’t include earlier. I became a hopelessly devoted fan of Warren Zevon very, very late in his career, when David Letterman invited him on in his last days. But I guess in my family I was the only one to listen to “Werewolves of London” as a kid and remember it fondly. It was a classic for me, no idea when or how I originally heard it. Still can’t believe the rest of the world hasn’t caught up with his genius.

#971. Lineage of Song: “Piece of My Heart”

 

Janis Joplin

Melissa Etheridge

Here’s another I hesitated to share in the early period of this thing, even though I love it. Again, I have no particular interest in Joplin, and I was genuinely confused that Etheridge didn’t emerge from her version a bigger star. In fact the opposite seemed to happen. But by that point a lot of cultural observers seemed intent to downplay anything that could compete, at the very least, with earlier memories. Which I don’t get. In the longterm you hurt all of it. Later generations (now) are robbed of the lineage. It’s kind of why we currently have a much less rich and celebrated music scene now. You can’t stand out if your predecessors were downplayed. You can’t build on a foundation somebody removed. I get that some of this is jealousy, that so many of the icons of yesteryear died young, that they never had a chance to take victory laps. And maybe in a lot of minds that actually somehow became preferable, since we now have the tendency to punish longevity. Doesn’t make it any less screwed up.

#970. Lineage of Song: “Landslide”

 

Fleetwood Mac

Dixie Chicks

Here’s another song I lost resisted including, even though it was a personal favorite. I didn’t grow up with much awareness of Fleetwood Mac, so I had no particular reason to have affection for the original version of “Landslide.” When the Chicks came out with theirs, I just knew I loved it. Then they had to go and sacrifice their popular career on the altar of political approval. Well.

#969. Lineage of Song: “This Land Is Your Land”

 

“When the World’s On Fire,” Carter Family

Woody Guthrie 

Bing Crosby

Bruce Springsteen

Obviously still on my A Complete Unknown high, I came up with this post, this is the song Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger pretends to sing innocently (and here I really am just realizing the subversiveness about Bob Dylan Seeger eventually completely forgets is in the spirit of what Seeger himself is doing at the start of the movie and in the spirit of the man who wrote this song, and the song itself, differentiated mostly because Dylan is fighting to be himself).

“This Land Is Your Land” is probably Woody Guthrie’s most successful song. It sounds plainly patriotic in the chorus, but when you get into the meat of it (it’s not as clear cut as Springsteen’s later “Born in the U.S.A.”) you realize Guthrie is protesting private despoiling of the country’s natural bounties (specifically when he reaches a fence). Guthrie became an icon best known by reputation and name rather than his bountiful output, so it certainly needs reminding that he really does have an iconic song to his credit. If there’s a failing to Complete Unknown, it’s that it doesn’t make it explicit that Seeger is using the song in a roundabout ironic fashion. Really, it’s the lynchpin to the whole movie. Once you see it you realize the depth of it. It’s one thing to see Dylan visiting Guthrie at the clinic repeatedly, another to realize that it becomes symbolic of the private lives they’re leading. Anyway, that title has a lot of context.

#968. Lineage of Song: “Turn, Turn, Turn”

 

Pete Seeger

The Byrds

Ah, so this is definitely one I composed in the aftermath of A Complete Unknown, where Seeger is played by Edward Norton, who has been able to settle into doing exactly what he wants after very uncomfortably existing in the early parts of his career in the mainstream. His starring role in The Incredible Hulk, the second entry in the MCU, was the definitive tipping point. He became known as “difficult to work with,” mostly stemming from taking over the production of his masterpiece, American History X. Seeger, meanwhile, seems to have been the last of the true believers in the folk music scene, the bridge between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. That aspect of Unknown is alone worth savoring, how Dylan navigates his early career, clearly enthralled with the dying Guthrie while forging ahead with Seeger, Joan Baez, rejecting their attempts to pigeonhole him, theirs and fans. Music as we know it would be poorer had he agreed. His legacy will continue to evolve over the coming decades. I’m currently working my way into a country act named Colter Wall, who sounds like a young version of the older Johnny Cash. He keeps denying it, but it’s absolutely there. His music seems to have been unearthed, like he’s tapping what Cash was always trying to mine. Bob Dylan is and was a more complete phenomenon than Cash. Just imagine the Bob Dylan version of Colter Wall. It’s going to happen. Wall plays in obscurity. He’s another Canadian act tapping into traditional American sounds, like the Dead South. Maybe the Bob will emerge from that, too. Or just show up in the anonymous music circuits most of us will never experience. Radio doesn’t look for these acts, and the expanse of the internet hides everything it finds. Such is what we have to navigate.

#967. Lineage of Song: “Forever Young”

Bob Dylan

Rod Stewart

Joan Baez

Here’s Bob again. It’s somehow still easy to take him for granted. It shouldn’t. The Rod Stewart version was apparently conceived as its own song, although there’s a ton of overlap. I never really got Rod Stewart as an artist. I kind of find him, David Bowie, Elton John, all of them to be careers that happened because they were willing to challenge expectations based on how they looked, outright displays of defiance that worked. We’re gonna sing in a traditional fashion but not look traditional, so our flamboyance is gonna cover the difference. Anyway.

#966. Lineage of Song: “Superman”

 

The Clique

R.E.M.

I’ve been at this project for about a year at the point I’m writing this (though it’ll be well into early 2025, and thus comfortably past a year of posts, by the time it’s published), and remarkably, whether new entries simply occur to me or I stumble on new material, the plot moves ever onward. This one’s the latter, since until reading about it a few moments ago I had no idea R.E.M.’s “Superman” was a cover.

#965. Lineage of Song: “Cruel Summer”

 

Bananarama

Ace of Base

Taylor Swift

I was/am a big fan of Ace of Base. “Cruel Summer” was, I think, the last time they had a hit song. I didn’t particularly care that it was a cover. Taylor Swift’s song is unrelated, but it shares the title, so here it is. It’s the song the radio station I listen to on Sunday mornings is most likely to play from her catalog.

#964. Lineage of Song: “Once in a Lifetime”

Talking Heads

Kermit the Frog

Muppets Tonight was a short-lived but fine addition to the Muppets canon. It gave unexpected pleasures like this random complete cover, and it also introduced Pepe the Prawn (okay?), who stands, to date, as the last breakout creation of the crew. If you’ve never seen it, my personal recommendation is the Jason Alexander episode. Alexander will always be best known as George on Seinfeld, but he’s surprisingly versatile when given the opportunity. Among the later sitcoms he tried to launch, my favorite was Listen Up, which ran for a single season in 2004/2005. The last episode feels like you’re watching a stage production. It’s Alexander stripped down to his most relaxed state, the total opposite of George Costanza. In the Muppets Tonight episode, the whole point of every sketch is him trying to avoid the famous histrionics, with the best one being him playing Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective (as recently portrayed by Kenneth Branagh in a rewarding series of films). All the Muppets keep calling him “Hercules.” He keeps setting them straight. They keep calling him Hercules. It ends with him ranting about the end of Superman (1978), the implausibility of the time travel gimmick…

Watching the actual Talking Heads video, listening to the song through that lens, it feels like a later generation’s conception of Buddy Holly (see also: Weezer’s “Buddy Holly,” the video for which features the Fonz). But Buddy Holly was never a geek, to his fans. He was idolized by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. He was a pillar in the birth of rock. It probably doesn’t help that while a good experience for fans, Gary Busey’s portrayal in The Buddy Holly Story leaves the geek impression very much in mind.
 

#963. Lineage of Song: “Heart and Soul”

 

Train, “Play That Song”

From Lost

When I originally tackled this project, Train’s contribution was actually the kind of song I didn’t really want to include. I first heard Train as a gloomy band my college roommate loved. Later in their career they discovered that they could sound pretty cheerful, and I guess that’s also why they later did “Play That Song,” or so I always assumed, because it wasn’t that easy for them to keep the new version of themselves going, especially as radio hitmakers. “Heart and Soul” itself is a classic bit of piano material that a lot of people learning how to play like to pick out on the keys. I loved when Lost had it show up with Jack’s doomed love in the flashbacks, who was played by Julie Bowen, whom I’d fallen in love with previously thanks to Ed, and before she found lasting success in Modern Family.

#962. Lineage of Song: “Thank You”

 

“Stan”

“Thank You”

Back in the day there was the belief that Dido’s “Thank You” was better off being sampled in Eminem’s “Stan” than existing on its own. I tend to wildly disagree. But it’s still interesting, that Eminem took a whole existing, until that point unknown contemporary song and used it as supporting material in his own, which ended up propelling not only the song but the artist into the mainstream. Sometimes rap shenanigans work as a force for good!

#961. Lineage of Song: “Monsters”

 

James Blunt

Iam Tongi

I don’t usually feature reality show singing competitions in this, but I was touring YouTube and just came across Iam Tongi, whose version of James Blunt’s song in his audition is truly one of those perfect moments.