Blog 3A: Demo and Written exploration of Cover Songs

Feeling Good

THE ORIGINAL: By Nina Simone

THE COVER: By Muse       

            

                Nina Simone was the first to make the song Feeling Good a big hit. Many covers have been created but the most famous cover of the song Feeling Good would have to be by Muse. Some people rank Muse’s cover of Feeling Good in the top 10 of the best covers of all time. New Musical Express has Muse’s cover as the number 1 cover of all time beating out covers by The Beatles, Johnny Cash, and Jimi Hendrix.

 What makes or breaks a cover depends on how the artist decides to portray the song that is being covered. Some artist completely change the song by giving it a different feel when others just redo the original to pay tribute to the song it self. The song Feeling Good was written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse but made famous by Nina Simone. Muse’s cover of Nina Simone version of Feeling Good has lots of similarities and differences between the two.

Having the same lyrics from the original song to the cover song is vital for its success of the cover in my opinion. In Muse’s cover of Feeling Good they take about 99% of the exact same lyrics from the Nina Simone version and put them into their own version the song. Muse even has the nonsense sounds at the end of their version that Nina Simone has in her version. The only differences in the song lyrics between the two versions are very small changes in some verses of a few words.

            The main melodies between the two versions are pretty much similar but the big difference is the musical quality between the two versions. In Nina Simone version she starts out the song with just vocals. In Muse’s version they start the song out with an altered keyboard sound then go into vocals with the same keyboard sound backing it up. Both versions have the full band kick in and start playing when the words feeling good are first heard. For the most part the rhythm, pitch, speed, timbre, and intensity are pretty much the same in Nina Simone and Muse’s version. One thing that Muse does in its version that Nina Simone does not is that in one of the verses in Muse’s version the singer sings into a megaphone changing the intensity, pitch, and timbre of the sound for a little bit.  The two big things that are different between the two versions would be the organization and instrumentation. In Nina Simone’s version the instrumentation was made up of mainly Big Band instruments while the instrumentation in Muse’s version was made up of keyboard, guitar, bass, and drums. The organization or song structure has similarities but also differences. The key difference would be that in Muse’s version they added a solo jam section, which is not heard in the Nina Simone version.

            When faced with the decision of having to pick which version I like better 90% of the time I would go with the original but in this case I would have to go with the cover. The reason I would pick the cover version would be because I feel that Muse’s version brings a whole new vision to the original song making it grow as a song. Another version of the song Feeling Good that I am a big fan of would have to be the version by Michael Bublé.       

Just for fun Here is the Michael Bublé version.