Chimes of Freedom.
An album just dropped today called Chimes of Freedom. It’s an album of covers of possibly my favorite artist and songwriter ever: the great Bob Dylan.
Now usually I love covers of Dylan songs, since its sometimes nice to hear a different artist’s take on the song or to occasionally get a break from Dylan’s less than perfect singing style. For example, the soundtrack to I’m Not There is filled with great songs; Jim James and Calexico’s version of Goin’ to Acapulco and John Doe’s Pressin’ On transform rather unknown Dylan tunes into spectacular pieces of music.
I haven’t gotten much of a chance to listen to the whole Chimes of Freedom album yet, but I’m not exactly happy with what I have heard. While it does have a number of covers by artists worthy to tackle a Dylan tune like Johnny Cash, Patti Smith, Pete Townshend, and Elvis Costello, it also features a couple I might suggest should be kept as far away from these songs as possible.
The artists I’m speaking of specifically are Miley Cyrus, My Chemical Romance, and Ke$ha.
Miley Cyrus sings You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go. On the one hand, she is obviously trying to bring a country vibe to the song rather than the pop Disney channel music that she has become famous for. But on the other, please only do a cover when you can actually make the song BETTER, which is what most of the artists are trying to do on this album.
While I can at least cut Miley a small amount of slack, Ke$ha (I’m already tired of typing that damn $ in her name) has commited a horrid injustice in my book. She has taken my favorite Dylan song of all time, Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, and mangled it beyond repair. Just go listen to it. Her awful voice singing some of the most well crafted lyrics makes me want to walk out into the rain and scream in agony to the heavens that this even exists.
I thought I hated Ke$ha before. I was wrong.
