Little Big Town has been doing many great youtube covers and needs to record an album of ‘em ‘stat’.

On the upside:

ALWAYS ON MY MIND (Willie Nelson)–I don’t know how many remember, but this, which is Willie’s biggest pop crossover hit (reaching #5 in June 1982) is a reworking of a song Elvis recorded back in 1972 when his marriage to Priscilla was falling apart. Willie’s great version is his own, while it also pays homage to the King.

C’EST LA VIE (Emmylou Harris)–E.H.’s typically spunky reworking of Chuck Berry’s 1964 rocker shows how to put an original spin on a classic while still remaining true to the spirit of the original.

And on the downside:

AMIE (Lonestar)–I’ve always kind of felt that Lonestar was a second-rate version of Pure Prairie League and Poco; and then they go out and do a carbon copy of PPL’s 1975 C&W/rock classic that really adds nothing new to it. Also, Lonestar’s Richie MacDonald is rather inferior to PPL’s Craig Fuller as a lead vocalist (IMHO).

POOR, POOR, PITIFUL ME (Terri Clark)–Linda understood very well the blackly comic premise of this Warren Zevon-penned ode to gang rape and S&M. I don’t think Terri did, though; and her heavy vocal twang is, I think, inferior to the nasty and spunky vocal snarl Linda bought to the song in her classic 1977 recording of it.

Anyway, the lead single from that album was a cover of Def Leppard’s “Photograph”, and you can find the promotional video on YouTube. At the time, of course, the Shania Twain / “Mutt” Lange nexus was releasing invincible country and pop crossovers, and one of the band members noted the oddity of a fully pop/rock vintage Lange-penned number being reworked as a country tune.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the song itself is so ill-suited to the adaptation that the result sounds more like a novelty than a fully realized cover… and there is no redemption to be found in the laconic, humorless production or the pedestrian vocals.

The pedestrian vocals were what sunk the entire album for me, in fact, so much so that I posted a rather blistering review of it on some forum (a google search suggests that, thankfully, it has been lost in the aether) back when I was young(er) and stupid(er) and fancied myself an authority on the genre.

First of all, I’m afraid I don’t quite see why any critic would be faulted for evaluating a song based on how they feel. What are a critic’s ratings supposed to be based on? Chart success? If that were the case, then the critic’s role would be pointless, since anyone can look at the charts to see which songs are currently popular. Thus, writing about one’s opinion of a song is perfectly normal and acceptable for a critic.

I don’t mind being in the minority. This is hardly the first time. Yes, the fact that a song becomes a hit means that a significant number of people liked it. But it goes without saying that even then, people will still form their own individual opinions, and there will still be some who dislike the song. In this case, I happened to be one of them. I personally think that his performance sounds like bad karaoke – not the worst ever, but bad in general – and the fact that the song was a hit doesn’t change that. And that’s fine – You like it; I don’t. It’s very subjective. I did state my opinion quite directly, but I don’t believe I implied in any way that my opinion is the only one that matters.

I can’t say I have any special attatchment to the Midler version, though I do consider it a degree superior to Twitty’s. Apologies if you found my judgment offensive. Conway Twitty was a talented artist, and as I stated above, there are plenty of his songs that I do like. “The Rose” simply does not happen to be one.