14 February 1967. Aretha Franklin records “Respect” in a New York session that continued work begun at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Two years earlier the same song had been released by Otis Redding - a man's plea for “respect” when he comes home from work. Franklin's version became her breakout hit and signature song, and Redding himself later folded her ideas into his own performances with the Bar-Kays. This is one way to rework someone else's song - swap the singer's gender and, with it, the narrative. Seven such ways can be counted, and each has at least one documented example.
The seven ways - a short list
- Genre change - Pushny, “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” in the style of Rammstein (12 December 2007); Johnny Cash, “Hurt” (2002, original by Nine Inch Nails, 1994).
- Tempo change - Global Deejays, a dance remix of “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” (January 2007).
- Singer's gender and narrative change - Aretha Franklin, “Respect” (1967) after Otis Redding (1965).
- Instrumental / minus - Francis Goya, an instrumental “Tenderness” (“Nezhnost”, album “A Tribute To Alexandra Pakhmutova”, 2002).
- Language transfer - F. R. David, an English “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” (2007); the “Buranovskie Babushki” in Udmurt (from 2008); Tsoi's “Sunny Days” in Ukrainian and French (KINOproby, 2000).
- Deconstruction / recombination - Coldcut, “Paid in Full (Seven Minutes of Madness)”, a remix of Eric B. & Rakim (October 1987).
- “Faithful” re-recording - tribute bands that recreate the original closely (Björn Again play ABBA); “Old Songs About the Main Things” (1995/1996, ORT) - melody kept, arrangement new.
Genre change: the same song in a different musical world
A genre change is the loudest trick: the song moves from one musical world into another, and the rhythm section changes automatically - new drum and bass parts make the song different at a physical level, before the listener even parses the lyric. Pushny's version of 12 December 2007 drops Oleg Kvasha's эстрада piece into the style of Rammstein, with a driving guitar stomp and a German lyric “Du Taxi mit den Augen grün”. In the opposite direction worked Johnny Cash: his “Hurt” of 2002 carried the industrial ballad of Nine Inch Nails (from the 1994 album The Downward Spiral; the promo single came out on 17 April 1995, and the original video was shot at a show in Omaha on 13 February 1995) into a country-acoustic sound. Cash's cover went onto his album American IV, and NME put its video among the greatest music videos of all time. Trent Reznor, the original writer, praised Cash's version for its sincerity and meaning and said that “that song isn't mine anymore”.
Tempo change: from lyrical to dance
Tempo separates a dance cover from a lyrical original. In January 2007 Global Deejays did not re-record Oleg Kvasha's vocal - they took the ready phonogram of his voice from the 2000 album “Tantsevalny Proekt Kvasha” and sped the context around it up to a club tempo. The result played on the in-game radio station Vladivostok FM in Grand Theft Auto IV. The same trick, only in the author's own hands, was used by Otis Redding: he reworked “Respect” out of a ballad by speeding up the tempo. How a eurodance remix is built as a format is broken down in a separate piece.
Singer's gender and narrative change: “Respect”
The most worked-through example is “Respect”. Otis Redding recorded and released the song in 1965 as a single from the album Otis Blue; on the Billboard Black Singles chart it reached the top five, and on pop radio the 35th spot. Franklin's version was recorded on 14 February 1967. The sessions had begun on 11 January at FAME Studios in Alabama with the recording of “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”; after an altercation between the studio owner and Franklin's husband and manager, Ted White, the work continued ten days later in New York - with the same engineer, Tom Dowd, and the same Muscle Shoals rhythm section, nicknamed the “Swampers”; the overall arrangement was by Arif Mardin. Franklin flipped the gender of the lyric - together with her sisters Erma and Carolyn; spelling out “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” was Carolyn's idea, and the “sock it to me” refrain was worked out by Carolyn and Aretha. King Curtis soloed on sax in the bridge - over the chords of Sam & Dave's “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby”; Franklin herself played piano. The single came out on 10 April 1967 and went onto her Atlantic debut album I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.
The version became a feminist anthem and won Franklin two Grammy awards in 1968; in 1987 the recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, in 2002 into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, and in the 2021 update of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time it took first place. Curiously, Redding himself later borrowed Franklin's ideas and folded them into his performances with the Bar-Kays. This is a rare case where a cover did not merely rework a song - it made the originator play by its rules.
Instrumental and minus: a song without a voice
An instrumental cover removes the vocal entirely. The Belgian guitarist Francis Goya recorded an instrumental “Tenderness” - a version of “Nezhnost” by Alexandra Pakhmutova - for the album “A Tribute To Alexandra Pakhmutova” in 2002. In meaning this is close to a minus track, a “recording minus one voice”: a removed lead vocal turns a song into a karaoke, minus-one or playback track. In disco practice instrumental versions long lived on the B-sides of 12-inch singles - DJs played them more often than the vocal ones. Commercial minus tracks, like studio instrumental covers, more often re-cut the accompaniment with session musicians, because the rights to the original performance of a famous band are simply too expensive.
Detail: “Respect” shows that a “singer's gender change” rarely comes alone - Franklin also added new lyrical elements (R-E-S-P-E-C-T, sock it to me, TCB) that were not in Redding. A cover version is strong by nature because one trick pulls others along with it.
Language transfer: the same material, a new addressee
A separate case is a language version of an original song. The Side by Side / “Bok o bok” album groups the English and Russian recordings by Disco Magic & valex77. These are language versions of their own composition, rather than a cover of another writer’s song.
Translating the lyric takes a song to a new geography. In 2007 F. R. David recorded an English “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” for the NTV project “Ty - Superstar!” - the translation was done in Moscow, the rights bought by the English company “Attack Concert”. From 2008 the “Buranovskie Babushki” sing, in Udmurt, Tsoi's “A Star Called the Sun”, Grebenshchikov's “The Golden City”, Butusov's “Walking on Water”, the Beatles' “Yesterday” and Queen's “We Are the Champions”. In the “KINOproby” tribute (2000) “Sunny Days” was cut in Russian, Ukrainian and French at once - all three sat on Tsoi's music. Translating a song into another language is a task of its own; how a song itself is built to take such a transfer is taken apart in the breakdown of a eurodance song's structure.
Deconstruction: take apart and reassemble
Deconstruction is not a genre change but a taking apart of the source recording and a reassembly. The trick's roots are in Jamaican dub of the late 1960s and early 1970s: King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry broke reggae tracks down to stems, cut the vocal, added echo and delay and put out instrumental “versions”. Coldcut's remix of Eric B. & Rakim's “Paid in Full”, released in October 1987 as “Seven Minutes of Madness”, made the top 15 in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK and is regarded as a benchmark: the source material was recombined into a new structure. The same root lies under the disco remix: Walter Gibbons cut a dance version of Double Exposure's “Ten Percent” - the first commercial 12-inch single on Salsoul Records - and it was not a new mix but a re-edit of the original. A selection of the best italo-disco remixes shows this trick at work in the 80s; the breakdown of how a cover differs from a remix and a minus legally is in the piece on the four concepts.
“Faithful” re-recording: fidelity as a trick
The opposite pole is a cover that deliberately keeps the melody and recognisability of the original. Tribute bands turn this into a commercial format: Björn Again recreate ABBA, The Fab Four the Beatles, as close to the original as possible. On Russian material the same principle ran in the “Old Songs About the Main Things” cycle on ORT (producer Konstantin Ernst, musical producer Alexander Kutikov, arrangement by Felix Ilinykh, director Dmitry Fiks; the first part aired on the night of 31 December 1995 to 1 January 1996): Soviet film songs were performed by 90s stars, keeping the melody under a new arrangement. In the first part, for example, “Good Girls” (from the film “Devchata”) were sung by Larisa Dolina and Irina Otiyeva, and “Oh, the Kalina Blooms” (from “The Kuban Cossacks”) by Angelika Varum. For a concrete example, see Disco Magic’s cover of Masterboy’s Feel the Fire.
How the seven ways combine
Two observations. First: the ways rarely travel alone. Franklin's “Respect” is a gender change, an addition of new lyrical elements and a new layer of meaning all at once; Pushny's “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” is a genre, rhythm-section and language change. Second: the line between the ways runs along which layer of the original is kept and which is replaced. A genre change swaps the rhythm section; a tempo change the speed; a gender change the voice and often the narrative; an instrumental removes the vocal; a language transfer changes the text; a deconstruction takes apart the recording itself; a “faithful” re-recording keeps the melody and changes the context. The seven ways are not seven mutually exclusive boxes but seven levers the arranger moves in different combinations. A third observation: the strength of a cover often lies not in which lever is pressed but in how precisely it is fitted to the voice and the audience - Franklin found the feminist context of 1967, Cash the elderly sincerity of 2002, Global Deejays the club tempo of the 2000s.
On 14 February 1967 Franklin chose the third lever - and two others along with it. Redding then sang “Respect” by her rules. A good cover trick, as we see, can not only rework someone else's song but rewrite its later life.