It was announced this week that Bob Dylan has joined other artists in recording an album of “wedding anthems for same-sex couples.” An album of standards with the lyrics amended (he swapped for she, she for he, etc). No material changes, no change to meter or message.
It prompted me to share a specific gripe I’ve had for some years. It is with coverers of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’.
Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton had a go in 2002. (As an aside, I have another beef with Counting Crows. Most disappointingly dull band I’ve ever seen live. Both times.)
Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton changed the lyrics. The original version includes a beautifully scanning rhyme in the payoff line – “Last night I heard a screen door slam, and a big yellow taxi took away my old man”. In the remake “… a big yellow taxi took my girl away”. Don’t do that. It’s a duet; have Vanessa sing it. Something. Just don’t change a great lyric and, if you must, please make an effort.
But Amy Grant’s version is the most egregious. It adjusts the lyrics in line with the retail price index.
Joni: “They took all the trees, put ’em in a tree museum, and they charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em.” (Again, this scans perfectly.)
In Amy’s world they charged all the people 25 bucks just to see them, her rewrite a result of a seminal Wall Street research paper on “The impact of inflation on tree museum admission prices (1970-1994)”.