Christine and the cover versions

The cover version of a song is an art in itself. Plenty of acts do them, very few actually get it right.

For a cover version to work, it can't be a straight recreation of the original; there are enough tribute acts to do that. An artist has to take a piece of work created by another artist, and reconfigure it according to their vision and make a new piece that can stand alongside their own work. It should also still have some of the DNA of the original, again there are plenty of songs that are just essentially derivative works of better originals, covers in all but name with enough changes to satisfy copyright lawyers.

I've always rated Husker Du's version of Eight Miles High. It couldn't be a version by any other band but Husker Du. Wile the original is there, it has been re-imagined and reworked into something wonderful and different, and also contextualising a bunch of hippy outsiders from the flower power 60s California to a bunch of punk outsiders from Minneapolis.



It's a skill to get it right. So hats off to Christine and the Queens for being the absolute royalty of the cover version.

Their best known is probably their version of Paradis Perdus from Chaleur Humain. 




It's a perfect choice of a song to cover. A 1973 hit for veteran chanteur Christophe, it was written by a young Jean Michel Jarre and was the title track of Christophe's album. I've read it described perhaps a little over-enthusiastically as one of the greatest French language songs, only equalled by Christophe and Jarre's later Les Mots Bleus. True or not depends on opinion, but it's certainly an outstanding song as well as one that is steeped in French music's history.



There's something in Christine's version that makes it seem almost autobiographical. The references to singing in the cellars of London, the melancholy and the self-doubt while dressed as a dandy. No doubt there's something in it she could relate to. But Christine takes it right into the 21st century, reference to Kanye West's Heartless sliding effortlessly into the mix, subtly adding another level to the original.

But it's not the end of the Christine's mastery of the cover version. Take her recent version of Véronique Sanson's Rien que de l'eau, a track. The 80s funk of the original (even though it came out in '92) lends itself perfectly to revision by Christine.




It could easily be a track from Chris, given that album's grounding in the music of that era. Her performance of the track on French TV seems less like her performing someone else's song and more like one of her own that had the involvement of another artist.

Véronique Sanson herself looks astonished watching the performance. It's easy to see why.

Many of the reviews of Chris mentioned the influence of Michael Jackson on the music, but there's an entire era of French music that also played a part in shaping the sounds of the album.




Elsewhere, look and listen to her versions of songs by Beyoncé and Rihanna. I can imagine dozens of X Factor attempting to perform these, and at best coming close to impersonating the originals. Artists like Beyoncé and Rihanna are so iconic, as are their songs, that to attempt a cover version should be a disaster. At best a pastiche, at worse a cynical attempt to market an artist to their audience.

I can't imagine another singer who could take on work like this and absolutely own it like Christine does. She does it with ease, and just for good measure throws in a bit of Kate Bush. And while we're at it, remember she's singing in a second language. It's astonishing to see.





Her take on the INXS track Need you tonight makes it clear her talent isn't just covering female artists. Michael Hutchence was again an iconic singer, any cover of his work would inevitably beg comparison to his original, but Christine masters it.




There are other anglophone songs from male artists that she's taken on and absolutely made her own. I wonder if a male English speaking artist would even consider a cover in a different language originally by a female artist? I think we can imagine the answer to that one...




Of course as a French singer, she's at home with work from francophone artists. Her version of Mylène Farmer's California makes the vocal references to Mylène's style, but it sits comfortably within the canon of Christine's own work.



Her version of Bashung's Osez Josephine is a real treat, stripping it to a bare skeleton of funk and breathing a new life into it. It's like a colour version while Bashung's a grainy black and white.





It would be wrong to finish without a version of a Christine song by another very different artist. A Scottish singer rapping in French is really something rather special...