Better Than the Original - The Joy of the Cover Version
Documentary which celebrates the role of the cover version in the pop canon and investigates what it takes to reinvent someone else's song as a smash.
Through ten carefully chosen cover versions that whisk us from the British Invasion to a noughties X Factor final, this film journeys over five decades to track how artists as varied as The Moody Blues, Soft Cell, Puff Daddy and Alexandra Burke have scored number 1s with their retake on someone else's song. Each of the ten classic cover versions has its own particular tale, tied not only into its musical and cultural context but also the personal testimony of the artists, producers and songwriters whose lives were changed in the process.
Narrated by Meera Syal, it explores the stories behind such iconic hits as House of the Rising Sun, Respect, Tainted Love, I'll Be Missing You and Hallelujah, with contributors including John Cale, Gloria Jones, Marc Almond, Rick Rubin, Faith Evans and British singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot.
The cover version has always been a staple of the pop charts. Yet it's often been viewed as the poor relation of writing your own songs. This film challenges and overturns that misconception by celebrating an exciting, underrated musical form that has the power to make or break an artist's career. Whether as tribute, reinterpretation or as an act of subversion, the extraordinary alchemy involved in covering a record can create a new, defining version - in some cases, even more original than the original.
(with soft subtitles)
First broadcast: 6 November 2015
Duration: 1 hour
Media info:-
General
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 1 015 MiB
Duration : 59mn 21s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 2 391 Kbps
Writing application : Lavf57.25.100
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 59mn 21s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2 293 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 3 500 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.100
Stream size : 973 MiB (96%)
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 59mn 20s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 93.5 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate : 46.875 fps (1024 spf)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 39.7 MiB (4%)
