In 1988 the Central Television editorial board refused Mikhail Boyarsky a slot in the all-Union “Song of the Year 1988” festival with his version of “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” - with the wording “very mournful, inexpressive, sleep-inducing”. A version with that verdict nonetheless attached itself to the song in mass perception, while the author's version, by composer Oleg Kvasha, stayed in the shade. This is the question: why one cover of a popular song takes off and another, sometimes no worse technically, remains a shadow of the original. Let us work it out on pairs where versions of one song diverged in fate.
Pair one: “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” in three hands
“Zelenoglazoe Taxi” is a convenient case, because one song has several documented versions with different fates. Kvasha wrote the song in 1987 and was the first to perform it. In 1988 the Melodiya label was preparing a long-play where every эстрада star would sing two Kvasha songs; the song appealed to Alla Pugacheva, but she was refused the performance, and “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” went to Boyarsky. He recorded it in November 1987 - and it is his version, despite the initial television refusal, that became widely known: Boyarsky's timbre and delivery fit the television-эстрада context of the late 80s.
In the mid-1990s Lyapis Trubetskoy made an unauthorised reworking of the same song; the group was allowed to perform it only in concert, without releasing it on disc, yet recorded an album with it and performed it on the New Year's “Ogoniok” on ORT, after which Kvasha filed four lawsuits through the Russian Authors' Society, and Konstantin Ernst aired the “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” video. The track did not become canonical - partly because the legal conflict kept it from settling. In January 2007 the Austrian group Global Deejays put out a dance remix built on Kvasha's vocal from his 2000 album “Tantsevalny Proekt Kvasha” - and found its niche: the track played on the in-game radio station Vladivostok FM in Grand Theft Auto IV. One song, three fates: take-off, a legal dead end, a club niche.
Pair two: “I Will Always Love You” - Houston vs Elvis and Ronstadt
Dolly Parton wrote and first recorded “I Will Always Love You” in 1973 at RCA Studio B in Nashville; the 1974 single reached number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Elvis Presley wanted to record the song, but his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, demanded that Parton sign over half of the publishing - by the Presley label's procedure, writers gave up half the publishing for the right to be recorded. Parton refused, and Elvis never cut the song. Linda Ronstadt recorded her version before Houston - but it was Whitney Houston's version that became the defining one.
Houston cut a pop-ballad arrangement for the film The Bodyguard; the single and the soundtrack came out on 3 November 1992. The song sat at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for fourteen weeks, earned a diamond RIAA certification, topped the charts of 34 countries and sold more than 25 million copies - the best-seller of 1992 and the biggest-selling single by a female solo artist in history. In 1994 the recording won the Grammy for Record of the Year, and Parton herself later recalled that the income from Houston's version let her “buy Graceland”. Why it took off: the pop-ballad arrangement was fitted to Houston's voice and backed by a film that gave the song mass exposure. The other two versions got neither.
Pair three: “Respect” - Franklin vs Redding
Otis Redding recorded and released “Respect” 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. Aretha Franklin recorded her version on 14 February 1967, flipping 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. Producer Jerry Wexler, engineer Tom Dowd, the Muscle Shoals rhythm section “Swampers”, arrangement by Arif Mardin. The sessions had begun on 11 January at FAME Studios in Alabama; after an altercation between the studio owner and Franklin's husband and manager, Ted White, the work continued ten days later in New York. King Curtis soloed on sax in the bridge, and Franklin herself played piano. The single came out on 10 April 1967 on Atlantic and went onto her debut album I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.
Franklin's version became a feminist anthem, won her two Grammy awards in 1968, in 2002 entered the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, and in the 2021 update of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs took first place. Redding later borrowed Franklin's ideas and folded them into his performances with the Bar-Kays. Why Franklin's version took off: alongside the gender swap she added new recognisable hooks (R-E-S-P-E-C-T, sock it to me) that were not in the original, and landed in the feminist context of 1967. The cover did not merely rework the song - it gave it a second layer of meaning.
Pair four: “Hurt” - Cash vs Nine Inch Nails
The industrial “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails came out on the album The Downward Spiral in 1994; the promo single came on 17 April 1995, and the original video was shot at a show in Omaha on 13 February 1995. In 2002 Johnny Cash cut a cover in a country-acoustic sound for the album American IV; NME put the video for this version 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”. Why Cash's cover took off: the arrangement was fitted to an aged voice that gave the industrial lyric a different - a farewell - weight, and the video sealed the effect. What made the first seconds recognisable here was not a synthesizer but an acoustic guitar and a voice.
Pair five: “Am I to Blame” - Golden Ring vs the romance
Another Russian case is “Am I to Blame” (Vinovata li ya), a sentimental romance by composer Alexey Muravlyov that over time became a folk song. In early 1995 the ensemble “Golden Ring” under Nadezhda Kadysheva released, on Soyuz Studio, the album “Am I to Blame…”, which became a best-seller. Why this version took off: a folklore-ensemble delivery carried a pre-revolutionary-origin piece into the mass эстрада of the 90s - a niche a chamber romance on its own never reached. The authorial version stayed with a narrow circle; the mass fame was brought by the ensemble one.
What sets a take-off cover apart
Bringing the pairs together, four traits mark a successful version:
- Recognisability of the first seconds: a new hook or a new texture by which the cover is identified at once - the “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” spelling for Franklin, the guitar and voice for Cash.
- Arrangement and key fitted to another voice: Houston's pop ballad, Franklin's feminist rebuild, Cash's elderly sincerity - each fitted to a concrete voice and register.
- Tempo relative to the original: Global Deejays sped “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” up to club tempo, Redding sped “Respect” up out of a ballad - tempo moves a song into a new listening format.
- A new semantic layer: the gender swap and feminist context for Franklin, the farewell weight for Cash, a new audience for the “Buranovskie Babushki” - the cover gives the song a second meaning the original lacked.
These four traits work on their own, but more often they support one another. For Franklin the recognisability of the first seconds (R-E-S-P-E-C-T) and the new semantic layer (the feminist context) are the same move, re-reading the song. For Houston the arrangement for the voice is backed by tempo and the film's exposure. For Cash the arrangement for an aged voice and the recognisability of the first seconds (an acoustic guitar) work together. A cover takes off when at least two of the four traits converge on one listener.
Detail: it is striking that “technical quality” is not on this list. Boyarsky's version was rejected by television as “mournful, inexpressive, sleep-inducing” - and it is exactly that one that took off. Lyapis Trubetskoy's version did not become canonical not because of the arrangement but because of the legal conflict. A cover's take-off is not a matter of craft but of niche: a new voice, a new context and a new listener.
What this means in practice
In practice the conclusion is twofold. A cover takes off when it closes a niche the original never reached: Boyarsky gave “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” a television-эстрада face, Houston a pop ballad under a film, Franklin a feminist anthem, Cash a farewell country ballad. When such a niche does not exist, a cover remains either a shadow of the original or a version with an independent but non-surpassing life - like Global Deejays' club remix in the GTA IV niche. The same logic is visible on the “Buranovskie Babushki”: their covers of Tsoi, Grebenshchikov, Butusov, the Beatles and Queen did not surpass the originals but took off in their own niche - the folklore ensemble carried them to the Eurovision 2012 final. For a concrete example, see Disco Magic’s cover of Masterboy’s Feel the Fire.
The difference between a cover, a remix and a minus track, which this turns on, is laid out in the piece on the four concepts: whether a cover “takes off” or not is a question of a version's fate, not its legal status.
In 1988 television found Boyarsky's version “sleep-inducing”. A little over thirty years later it is exactly that version people name when they recall “Zelenoglazoe Taxi”. A good cover, as we see, can lose at the start and win over the distance - if it finds a voice and a listener the original never found.