6 Artists Who Re-recorded Their Songs

this video is sponsored by golden lotus studio whether for artistic reasons or for legal reasons artists will sometimes cover or re-record their own songs sometimes they're doing this to try and recreate the original as closely as possible but more often they're aiming to bring something new to the song to put a new artistic twist on that song this is exactly the case with joni mitchell and her classic song both sides now joni mitchell wrote both sides now when she was only 21 years old and her first recording of it came out on her 1969 album clouds this is a clip of joni performing this song in 1970. [Music] as you can hear this original version is a fairly typical but beautiful folk song a solid acoustic guitar part supporting a solo vocal line above and nothing much else a very nice sweet song with a captivating lyric it's a great track a great arrangement and was and is very popular with listeners but joanie wasn't that sure about the song and as she got older she started to feel like there was more that she could bring to the recording see the thing is both sides now is a song about thinking you know about something to only learn later that you actually knew nothing about its true nature whether it be clouds or love or life you think you've got it all sussed but then later you see that thing from another perspective another side and you realize that you never really knew anything about it at all and this is exactly why joni felt like she had to re-record both sides now as she explains in this interview clip at the age of 21 she wasn't ready to sing a song about seeing life from both sides she needed to grow into the song that song i've looked at life from both sides now you know 21 when i wrote it i took a lot of ridiculing for it i was just miscast in it i think as a young girl that that i i really like the performance i did in my 50s of it and my young one you know i it's it's too young a girl to pull off that role at age 56 joni revisited both sides now the acoustic guitar accompaniment was replaced by a lush emotive orchestral arrangement put together by vince mendoza who subsequently won a grammy for the arrangement this beautiful arrangement which is at a slower freer tempo than the original has also been transposed down a major third placing joni's now older voice in a deeper warmer register so many things [Applause] [Music] the original version captures the headstrong wonder of a young person working out what life is about for the first time but the later version offers a different side to the story a more worn wise and hard-earned perspective that casts a bittersweet tone over the [Music] [Music] mirror thanks to these two amazing recordings made almost 30 years apart we get to hear both sides of both sides now john lennon was well known for never being happy with his recordings in fact as you will hear in this interview clip with george martin john claimed that he actually wanted to re-record everything that the beatles had ever done and perhaps if he hadn't been tragically killed in 1980 he would have gone on to do this we were just rapping about old times and he suddenly came out and he said you know i wish we'd i'd like to do everything over and over again i said come on john not everything he said yeah everything i said you mean you don't think we ever did anything right no he said most of what we did was crap i said you can't say it what about strawberry fields he looked to me especially strawberry fields which really floored me but then john's dreams were always dreams they never became reality he always envisioned things that were more beautiful greater extraordinary more extraordinary than anything he could possibly really realize in in real life but even without being given the opportunity to re-record the beatles entire back catalogue john's perfectionism meant that he would sometimes completely re-record beatles songs before they even got released if you've watched my video on strawberry fields forever and its weird micro tonal keycenter then you'll know that the version of the song that we know and love today is actually a spliced combination of two quite different recordings of the song the original take and a re-recording that jon requested to be made from scratch but another lennon song that went through various incarnations and was re-recorded from scratch is revolution the difference of revolution though is that both the original version and the re-recorded version both got released in 1968 the beatles released three versions of the song revolution there was the version simply referred to as revolution which was the b-side to hey jude we also had revolution 1 which was released on the white album [Music] and of course there was revolution 9 which was also released on the white album and as you can hear is a drastically transformed version of the song nine number nine number nine so how did we wind up with three versions of this song well the first version to be recorded was actually the version we know today as revolution one referred to at the time simply as revolution the beatles tried a few different takes of the song before arriving at take 18. take 18 was actually a 10 minute version of the song beginning with the song as we know it but then descending into an intense heavy jam section for the last five minutes of the duration don't you know it's gonna be all right don't you know don't you know despite liking this 10 minute jam version of the song lennon was also very keen to release revolution as a single and knew that they couldn't release a 10 minute long single so lenin cut the track in two the first four minutes of the track became what we now know as revolution one and the remaining unused six minutes was used as the foundation of lenin's experimental sound collage revolution nine so that's how we got two versions of revolution but where did the third version come from well as i mentioned before lenin was very keen to release revolution as a single but mccartney and harrison argued that the track they had recorded revolution 1 was too slow to be a single adamant that the song be the band's next single lennon decided that they should record a faster heavier version of revolution from scratch and that's how we wound up with the single version of the song the version we know today as revolution and thank god that paul and george did push john to re-record revolution because the version they re-recorded wound up being the version that most fans would consider the true version despite the fact that it was recorded last in a moment we'll take a look at how radiohead on more than one occasion have taken over a decade to record a version of a song that they're actually happy to release but just before we do that i want to talk to you about today's sponsor which is golden lotus studio golden lotus studio is a online community devoted to music training education and songwriting they offer courses in music theory ear training recording and producing they also host a weekly online songwriting club every friday at 4pm eastern standard time at the club you'll join fellow songwriters on a video call and work through writing your own song in just 75 minutes each songwriting club session is followed by a q a with a industry professional and on the 20th of august that industry professional will actually be me if you want to catch my q a session or just find out more about golden lotus studio then head to goldennotedstudio.com or click the link in the description below you can also use coupon code david to get a special discount and bonus offer another artist who seemingly shares lenin's perfectionism is radiohead for example you're probably familiar with radiohead's song nude which was released on their 2007 album in rainbow but nude was actually first recorded in 1997 during the ok computer recording [Music] [Applause] [Music] sessions as you can hear this early version is a bit more stripped back and features a prominent hammond organ part it also has different lyrics radiohead producer nigel godrick describes in this interview why nude wound up being shelved for so long the band liked it it was deemed a great success but then for some reason everyone went off it we tried to record it a couple more times for ok computer probably about three times for kid a and another three times for hail to the thief the spark that eventually created the version of nude that we know and loved today was actually a new bass line that colin greenwood had come up with colin had written his new bass line which transformed nude from something very straight into something that had much more of a rhythmic flow we recorded it three times and the final version is what you hear today there's a similar story behind radiohead's track true love weights which was originally recorded in 1995. much like nude the band first tried recording true love weights for ok computer but was never happy with the results band tried re-recording the song on multiple occasions over the next 20 years but it took until 2016's moon-shaped pool for the track to be finally released on an album in 1962 jazz pianist herbie hancock released his debut solo album taking off and its lead single watermelon man became a big hit watermelon man is a fairly standard 16 bar blues with a catchy melody and a great group this song and album was the starting point of a very successful career in jazz for herbie with him joining miles davis band the very next year but despite his success in jazz music by 1973 herbie was looking to expand beyond jazz he'd been listening to a lot of funk music like james brown and sly stone and decided to take his jazz stylings into the world of funk he started working on a new album with a band called headhunters and one of the tracks on the album would be a heavily reworked version of his old debut hit watermelon man this new version retains the original melody and chord progression but completely swapped out the original jazz quintet arrangement for a selection of synthesizers rhodes keyboard electric bass and funky drum roofs [Music] the only real structural change to the song was the addition of this new b section which actually happens to be a great example of the lick and of course the other ear catching addition to this version of watermelon man is the intro and outro sections created by percussionist bill summons the unusual flute-like sound is actually bill summers playing a beer bottle but he isn't just blowing across it he's actually playing it like a pygmy hindu the hindu is a small flute instrument used by the pygmy people of the central african republic as explained in this clip the distinctive sound we hear at the start of watermelon man is created using a particular vocal technique it's a bamboo flute playing only one note that's that's the only node you can get out of that fluid but the pygmies who are the inventors of this flute are clever people the the flute says something like and you you reply to the flute by saying [Music] this funky reimagining of watermelon man was pioneering in the way that it fused the styles of jazz funk and african pygmy music but as you'll see from this interview clip not everyone was a fan of herbie's new direction you you were criticized for that change oh yeah fortunately i had learned so much from miles davis prior to that about you know being able to stand up for what you believe in and to but that's the only only way you can really respect yourself and and i had to be true to my own convictions herbie hancock is an artist who has evolved and adapted during his career in music and these two versions of watermelon man perfectly illustrate their evolution with all of the examples we've looked at so far these songs have been re-recorded because the artist was even not happy with the original recording or felt like there was something new they could bring to the song but now we're going to look at a few examples where songs have been re-recorded not for artistic reasons but for legal reasons because of copyright and ownership issues typically when a artist records with a record label those recordings those master recordings are controlled and owned by the record label after all it's the record label who has invested money in making those recordings so they want to be able to make sure that they can get a return on that investment of course what sometimes happens is that the artist and the record label have a disagreement have a falling out and then who controls the original masters becomes quite a contentious issue and sometimes artists have become so frustrated by this situation that they've actually decided to re-record their entire back catalogue this is exactly what taylor swift is in the process of doing at the moment the master recordings of her first six albums are owned by a record executive called scooter braun and this meant that swift has often actually been blocked from using her own recordings so in protest swift is now re-recording these albums from scratch she's already recorded and released the first two and as you can hear these new versions are ultimately straight recreations of the originals swift isn't trying to put a new spin or angle on these versions they are ultimately just subtly updated sound alikes designed to replace the originals a similar example to this is the righteous brothers version of unchained melody the righteous brothers version of unchained melody recorded in 1965 featured prominently in the 1990 film [Music] ghost thanks to the film's success there was a sudden renewed interest in the song and people really wanted to buy a copy of it but of course in 1990 you couldn't just buy this track on itunes or stream on spotify you had to go to a physical record store and purchase a cd tape or vinyl and the thing is with physical record stores is that they can't physically stock every single recording ever made particularly a song recorded in 1965 they may not have that in stock anymore but of course that's not really a common issue what would normally happen is if an old song had a new resurgence of demand the record label would reissue that single and then new versions of the song could be manufactured and sold in record stores the problem was the rights to the original 1965 master version of the song were tied up in such a way that it could only be reissued as a 45 rpm vinyl record a format that by 1990 wasn't particularly popular anymore so to allow for this track to be reissued as a cd or a cassette which were the prominent formats at the time the righteous brothers actually had to re-record the track from scratch this new version is very similar but the lush string arrangements of the original has been replaced by a synth-based backing instead and the new vocal recording performed by now 50 year old bobby hatfield doesn't quite capture the same level of magic as the original 1965 version as i said at the time the song was a big hit and was being played a lot on the radio but it was the original 1965 version that was being played on the radio so when people went to the record store and bought this new re-recorded version i can't help but think they might have been a bit disappointed when they got home and put it on [Music] let me know in the comments if you can think of any other examples of artists re-recording their own songs and as always a massive massive thanks goes to everyone who supports me on patreon including the names you see on screen right now and andrei science diargia andy deacon andrew andrew brown andrew sussman austin barrett austin russell bob mckinstry whitney parker cameron alvila colin aiken chris cabal christopher ryan david rivers donald howard dr darren wicks elena schwarchenko eugene leroy fd hodor greg kobowski iolamo latona hamish brocklebank hernick kutcher hugo miller ivan pang jake fisher james kayo j.a hookensburger john dye josh sandolin justin vigger lee lauritsen mark ziegenhagen max o'keefe melody composer squared melanie shona michael vivian nancy gillard nathan lawrence nathaniel park paul middleton paul muller paul peter dunphy richard bride roger clay john kennedy steve daly stephen lazzaro tim beaker homer aharoni trisha adams tim payne victor levy video flowers vladimir kodakov balti and weyland fairbanks [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 85,498

Rating: 4.9696493 out of 5

Keywords: cover songs, re-recording, version, music theory, analysis, comparison, copyright, new version

Id: 5OQoFhjI3lU

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021