Blog assignment 3A (Demo and written exploration of cover songs)

The song that I chose for this assignment is "With a little help from my friends."  For anyone who does not know this song it was originally written and composed by the Beatles and was shortly after covered by Joe Cocker.  Here is a link to the Youtube page with the beatles version and here is the version by Cocker. The Beatles version came out in 1967 while the version by Joe Cocker came out only two years later in 1969.  For this assignment we will compare and contrast the two songs using two of the three topics given in the assigment.  These are lyrics, melody, and the overall music quality.  The first thing I will be talking about is the lyrics of the songs.  After listening to the two songs as well as looking up the lyrics for both on lyrics.com I found that while both of the people singing the song even though they both sound very different in the end both of the songs have generally the same lyrics.  They may change a little from time to time, especially during the live version by Joe Cocker, but the same main lyrics and in both of the two versions.  The second of the three topics I have chosen is the music quality, which is classified by Rhythm,  Intensity, Pitch, Timbre, Speed and Organization.  The rhythm of the version done by Cocker is much slower and soulful.  The overall tempo is much slower which brings the rhythm down a lot, while the Beatles version is faster paced and funner.  The Intensity of the Cocker version is very loud.  It's almost as if he if yelling the song instead of singing it.  The Beatles version is the exact opposite, it is quieter and easier to listen to.  The pitch of the Beatles song is much higher than the other.  They use guitars without distortion which makes them generally high pitched and the singer has a higher pitched way of singing.  The timbre of the cocker version is a lot more complex than the Beatles version.  There are a lot more layers to the music.  They use heavier guitars and the singing is loud and intense.  The Beatles on the other side have fewer layers that go together better, making their timbre a lot simpler.  Then there is the speed of the two songs.  The Beatles song has a much faster tempo than the Cocker song.  It's beat and tempo move a lot faster.  The Joe Cocker version seems to be a lot faster because of all of the layers that you can hear and because he yells a lot of the notes instead of singing them clearly like the Beatles did.  However if you listen closely to the overall speed of his song you can tell that it is actually slower.  Like most songs that are soulful, Cocker drags out almost every note that he sings.  This slows down all of the instruments being played and therefore the whole song.  While the Beatles version has the same number of lyrics it only lasts around two minutes and forty-five seconds.  Cocker's version with the same amount of lyrics lasts over five minutes because of the tempo and the way that they drag it on.  The last of the things to talk about in the musical quality is the organization of the song.  This means whether the song is ordered or if it is chaotic.  This is big in these two songs because they are both on opposite sides of the spectrum.  The version that is more ordered is the one that was made by the Beatles.  This version was very well put together.  It seemed as though every note was right where it was meant to be and the song flowed nicely as it went on.  The Cocker version on the other hand was very chaotic.  The layers of all of the different instruments seemed almost improvised.  They came in randomly and had different solos which distracted from the singing and made you focus on different things several times.  The way the lyrics were sung also made it chaotic.  Cocker yelled a lot of the lyrics which gave it a more chaotic feel than the Beatles who nicely sang the song.  After listening to these two songs I have decided that I like the Beatles version a lot more.  I like cover songs a lot, especially ones done by Led Zepplin, but the original of this song was much better.  The tempo was nice and faster.  Also the instruments sounded a lot better that the heavier ones used by Cocker.  I like the soulful way in which Cocker sang the song but in the end I think that the original by the Beatles just went together better than Cocker and his band.