A short post but I've been thinking about this for a while
Y'know, I think it's a shame that Rick Rubin never got Johnny Cash to do a cover of XTC's "Dear God." Everytime I hear that song (or Tricky's version of it) I think how, not unlike Nine Inch Nails's "Hurt" or Nick Cave's "The Mercy Seat," it's a song that Cash would make his own. A man batting with his faith is prime Cash material. I don't know how Cash would feel about covering a song that arguably comes out on the side of atheism but perhaps in Cash's hands it would become something else.
Comments:
That would have been pretty amazing, but I just can't get my head around the idea of Cash agreeing to record that song. Andy Partridge intended it to be very clearly and unashamedly atheist. While the lyrics could be interpreted as a "crisis of faith" or "guy wrestling with doubt" instead of "guy firmly embracing doubt and kicking the last vestiges of faith out the door" if one were really determined to see it that way -- well, it'd be a tough sell to a devout singer like Cash, and at best you'd wind up with a performance that betrayed the intent of the composer.
All that said...I recently heard Dolly Parton's astonishing cover version of "Stairway To Heaven" for the first time, and I'm fascinated by it for a very similar reason. It never occurred to me for all these years that song could have an overtly Christian interpretation -- what with your pipers and May Queens and whatnot running around the forest, not to mention all the occultist rumors surrounding Zep -- but when Dolly sings it, the song is so clearly a Christian devotional song that it's impossible to see how it could ever be heard any other way. Now that's what I call a vocal performance!
# posted by RAB : 9:20 PM
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