Three Of The Best Songs Ever Recorded By Anyone Ever
"Money Changes Everything" by the Brains is a great song. The original '78 single is a snide, sneering exclamation of disgust and defeat, where a cold break-up makes a guy realize just how much capitalism has its fingers in his romantic rock dreams. The 1980 re-recording, produced by Steve Lillywhite, adds MTV-ready echo without losing an ounce of contempt for the world that's got our narrator at its mercy.
Then, four years later, Cyndi Lauper covered it on her debut album. And with one little pronoun change, the song was all hers.
The original:
"Ah honey how can you do it
We swore each other everlasting love"
She said, "Well yeah I know but when we did
There was one thing we weren't really thinking of, and that's money"
Lauper's:
"Ah honey how can you do it
We swore each other everlasting love"
I said, "Well yeah I know but when we did
There was one thing we weren't really thinking of, and that's money"
*GIF of fireworks exploding over Eric Wareheim's head*. Suddenly, the narrator isn't some sad shmuck sulking that you can't trust anybody. Now the narrator is a sad shmuck admitting they can't be trusted. It's resignation and complicity, someone seething and surrending to her inability to manage romantic sacrifice in a capitalist world. An ugly confessional, rather than a proud complaint. But there's also somethingly perversely celebratory about it. Though Lauper's band Blue Angel was long done before the solo deal came, the song (especially as an album opener!) works as an announcement of independence from any illusions of rock camaraderie. We succeed as we dream, alone. Her yells over the bombastic climax are as confusing as Bruce Springsteen's on "Born In The USA," another song that sounds like a victory lap despite lyrics describing soul-destroying loss (and released less than a year later!). Knowing the radio hit first, it took me years to hear the original as anything more than a misguided demo a la Robert Hazard's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (With Me)."
Scrawl didn't have to change a word to make another angry guy from 1978 sound a little lacking of self-awareness. John Lydon had valid gripes about his "Public Image" and his treatment by the media, fans, etc. But did it ever occur to him that some people don't have to become media darlings to deal with superficial judgement? That Marcy Mays from Colmbus, Ohio might experience this without wearing safety pins or signing with Malcolm McLaren?
You never listened to a word that I said
You only seen me from the clothes that I wear
Or did the interest go so much deeper
It must have been to the color of my hair
As with The Brains, Public Image Ltd's original still holds up as angry, anthemic new wave, but you can't unhear the new dimension unlocked by the "it me" quote-tweet. Lydon's "somebody had to stop me!" is a star tantrum, considering no one stopped him from making the uncommercial Flowers Of Romance or the ultracommercial Album. Scrawl's cover appears on Nature Film, the band's major label epitaph - half re-recordings of their best indie songs because Elektra didn't merit the effort of new copyrights. And it's a crime their shit hasn't been given the deluxe reissue treatment. Nobody's stopping them from making another album, but they have more right to the exclamation than he did.
OK, so proud songs by angry guys can open way up when covered by less pompous women. Could a guy achieve the inverse? Probably not, as even the schlubbiest guy wryly covering Madonna still wouldn't qualify as punching up. But there's at least one case where men gave a new dimension to a great song by a woman, albeit one that doesn't undercut her own work, except maybe in the mix. I've underrated The Futureheads' 2004 debut since 2004 because they put 13 songs in front of their cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds Of Love," and I really just wanted to hear "Hounds Of Love." Maybe it's my own woke bae aspirant bias, but Barry Hyde quivering "I've always been a coward...I feel ashamed to be running away!" as he and his bros pummel away at their instruments and turn Bush's Fairlight fun into a soccer chant? If Panic At The Disco had done this rather than a fame-indifferent UK indie act, we'd be looking at the emo "Sweet Caroline." Another revelatory "IT ME!" quote-tweet, just a far sweeter one.