When is a cover song better than the original? Only you can decide. This week Grizzly Bear takes on Yes’ “Owner Of A Lonely Heart.” MAGNET’s Edward Fairchild pulls the pin. Take cover!
A year after the classic, prog incarnation of Yes broke up in 1981, bassist Chris Squire and drummer Alan White formed a new band, Cinema, with South African guitarist Trevor Rabin. The group began recording demos with former Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye and producer/musician Trevor Horn (who had replaced Yes vocalist Jon Anderson for its previous album, Drama,). The sessions were going well, but the group was still without a vocalist. When Squire bumped into Anderson at a party, he played him some of the recordings. Anderson was impressed enough to rejoin the band, and rechristened as Yes, the group’s next album, 90215, would be the biggest of its career. To some hardcore Yes fans, this is like Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, but this song, penned by Rabin, still went to number one. In 2006, Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear recorded a spaced-out version of its own for the Sorry For The Delay EP.
The Cover:
The Original:
9 replies on “Take Cover! Grizzly Bear Vs. Yes”
Can’t there be a third voting choice? ‘Vomited too hard to vote?’
Tolkien rock isn’t hip anymore and the Grizzly Bear version is interesting, but I still gotta go with YES on this one.
Where’s the “The original stinks and the cover didn’t somehow magically transform it into a good song” button? Or the “Good god, somehow the cover made me WANT to hear the original instead” button?
No contest…Grizzly Bear’s version is a snoozefest. Yes!!
the interlude on the Yes video was facinating. I’m thinking the grizzly bear version is really awful. Am I wrong?
I can’t believe I’m actually sanctioning one of these choices by casting a vote for it. Magnet, why do you make me do the things I do?
Yes rocked! Grizzly Bear (softer-ly) rock too. I’d like to hear more covers of this nature, but this version sucked my butt. I agree that there should’ve been a Puking Too Hard To Vote button as well.
Thanks.
As a major Yes fan i’ll admit I have my slant on the voting. (Time and a Word keeps ringing in my head from time to time.) But this is no contest. Grizzly Bear has a lot of good ideas but are mixing them on this song so that it metamorphoses into a melodic miasma that several times leads nowhere. The slurred sentences and slow buzzing guitar riffs simply don’t work on a song that demands spark and soul by its very nature.
I’m not a Yes fan. I always kind of liked that song, but not in a big way. The Grizzly Bear version sucked. Hard. Who picked this match-up? You know, you don’t have to give equal time to every miserable piece of shit who records underarm fart noises into their mom’s computer. Dude can’t sing, and his idea to slow down some old forgotten pop song isn’t clever enough to make up for the half-assed execution. Thumbs down to Grizzly Bear for creating that aural puke stain, and to Magnet for tricking me into smelling it.