Take a Sad Song and Make It Better: Two Transformative Covers

Throw Me The Statue, “If This Is It” (Originally by Huey Lewis and the News)

Ida, “Shoe-In” (Originally by Secret Stars)

Throw Me the Statue has got to be one of the most inventive pop acts working today. “Lolita,” off their debut Moonbeams, has been stuck in my head for a year, a relentless earworm whose catchiness owes to double-tracked drums, unapologetically shredded acoustic guitar, cascading glockenspiel riffs, a downright whiplash-inducing structure…I could go on. So it follows that their version of “If This Is It” for the forthcoming Huey Lewis tribute comp Are You Still With Me?! bubbles over with new and original parts, sprung from the brain of TMTS mastermind Scott Reitherman. He doesn’t adapt the song so much as conquer it, remorselessly purging all traces of the composer’s signature style and replacing them with his own. It’s a tactic that can fail spectacularly, even in talented hands (I still shudder at the Fiery Furnaces’ 2005 cover of “Norwegian Wood,” which effectively reduced one of most beautiful songs ever written to a clumsy pile of thudding, awkward syllables). When this approach succeeds, though, it’s usually because in adjusting the tone of the music, the interpreter has managed to wring poignant new meaning from the words.

Reitherman takes no prisoners in dispensing with the 80s schmaltz of his source material: the swingin’ six-eight beat is compressed into snappy four-four, punctuated by machine-gun fills. The doo-wop backing vocals and wankish lead guitar are scrapped in favor of swelling synths and a contemplative bass line. The loungey horn section gets a minimalist makeover, much less Vegas and much more marching band. The biggest change is in the vocals, where Lewis’ trademark yowl has been smoothed into a gentle coo, one that stretches the lyrics across long, mournful tones. Those lyrics may not be anything special, but they convey a feeling we all can relate to, and in this new context they’re positively heartbreaking. The musical backdrop of the original song cast Lewis as the affable loser—so ruthlessly put-upon, so utterly hopeless, that we couldn’t help but laugh. Under Reitherman’s watch, that character is transformed into a genuinely sympathetic romantic hero, one we can easily root for, even fall for.

Where “Shoe-In” is concerned, I admit up front that I’m not qualified to give an objective, scholarly evaluation: I heard the Ida version first, believed it was theirs, and had already formed an intense, personal relationship with the song before I ever even heard of Secret Stars. There’s nothing wrong with their original and I give them props for the lyrics, which describe an ambiguously romantic relationship with haiku-like simplicity, pointing its characters toward a happy ending but never quite getting them there. As far as I’m concerned, though, this song belongs to Ida, whose arrangement is so thoughtful it tells a story of its own. The acoustic and electric guitar tracks wander about in separate stereo channels, each indulging their own separate daydreams, until the chorus kicks in—then, they lock eyes, assume positions, and slow dance.