Here's another situation in which a song came into my head in cover versions of the exact opposite chronology of original release. This also happened recently with Tom Waits's Downtown Train. Similarly to my experience with that song, it's likely that my memory lines default to the version I heard first or I'm most familiar with.
This trifecta of covers featured prominently at a Jewish youth group dance my junior year of high school, when Phil Collins's super-schmaltzy 1988 version was topping the charts.
My good pals Kama and Barry planned Beau-Sweetheart Ball: "A Groovy Kind of Love," and attempted to make brilliant use of the song. They carefully instructed the DJ to play music from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, in roughly chronological order, kicking off each era with its version of "A Groovy Kind of Love." Unfortunately, the DJ wasn't compliant (creative differences, perhaps?*) The song was written by genius pop songstress Carole Bayer Sager ("Don't Cry Out Loud," "Nobody Does It Better," "Arthur's Theme," "That's What Friends Are For"...should I go on??) and Toni Wine, one of the real humans behind the cartoon band The Archies. Artist: Phil Collins Year: 1988 Rating: Cold Artist: Sonny & Cher Year: 1967 Rating: Warm Note: Okay, this version didn't represent the '70s, per se, but Sonny & Cher sure as hell did.) Also: I found this version of the song courtesy of Romanian video site Trilulilu. It wasn't on YouTube. Artist: The Mindbenders Year: 1965 Rating: Warm *A tip of the hat to Kama and Barry.
i love this song and unfortunately i havent thought about it in years... thanks for a lovely ear worm tonight (and i love phil as well as sonny and chers version)
ReplyDeleteCool! I love so many aspects of this project - and leaving earworms in my wake is one of them. Evil earworms have their own special joy, but it's also nice to leave good ones. :)
ReplyDelete"We're 'Creative Differences', and we're here to sing (badly) for you on this here radio..."
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