Friday, August 31, 2018

Song of the Day: 'Let Me Live in Your City' by Paul Simon


Music history is littered with brilliant songs that didn't start out as good. "That's Jungle for You" -- the original refrain from became Culture Club's delightful "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" -- "You Always Hang Around" -- the inferior first take of the Breeders' "Divine Hammer"and "The Disco Song" -- the heartless first crack at Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and the so-wrong demo of the Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket," where Chrissie sings "you're special, so special" -- quickly come to mind. But I think this early version of Paul Simon's "Something So Right" might be the biggest improvement of them all. It's not that there's anything wrong with it. It's just the idea of there not being a song so optimistically unoptimistic makes me shudder.

When something goes wrong 
I'm the first to admit it 
I'm the first to admit it 
But the last one to know 
When something goes right 
Well it's likely to lose me 
It's apt to confuse me 
It's such an unusual sight 
I can't get used to something so right 
Something so right



Can you think of any songs that got major overhauls for the better? 

1 comment:

Edgar_Carpenter said...

Two performers who consistently took old songs and made them better were Linda Ronstadt, who re-arranged and improved classic Mexican songs (I hear current Mexican singers using her arrangements here in Guadalajara), and Bruce Springsteen who re-worked and improved old American folk songs.