The cover Paul Simon gave a standing ovation: ‘We’ll marry our fortunes together”
For artists, covers must be a strange thing. Suddenly a song, perhaps a deeply personal song written about their lives or at least coming from their minds, is now being sung from the mouth of another. Maybe it’s beautiful, maybe it’s painful, but at least on one occasion for Paul Simon, it was deeply moving.
There are countless stories of musicians talking about other people covering their work. Some acts hate it. Billy Joel once threatened action if a certain artist ever attempted to sing his song again. There are plenty of case where people have shunned bad version of their work, opening dissing it or criticising what another musician has done to their music.
On the flip side though, there are artists who are always touched by other people wanting to engage with their art in that way. “I’m always pleased when somebody sings a song of mine,” Leonard Cohen once said, adding, “In fact, I never get over that initial rush of happiness when someone says they are going to sing a song of mine. I always like it.” In his case, he loved covers of his music, especially praising Jeff Buckley’s famed version of ‘Hallelujah’.
But it must be weird. Especially when it comes to deeply emotional or personal songs, hearing them sung back at you must be a strange experience – yet one ripe with the potential for beauty.
Simon encountered that a lot as an endless stream of people have cover Simon and Garfunkel tracks in their time, or taken on a song like ‘50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’. But it was the moment that First Aid Kit covered ‘America’ that moved him most.
At the Polar Music Prize ceremony in 2012, Simon sat looking overcome with emotion as the Swedish folk duo sang the 1968 track with rich harmonies. “Let us be lovers we’ll marry our fortunes together,” they began, keeping it simple with just acoustic guitars. But as the orchestra behind them swelled to life, the cover became a mighty thing and one truly celebratory of Simon’s songwriting talent.
Seemingly holding back tears in the crowd as they performed the track, Simon isn’t the only artist to have been moved by a performance from First Aid Kit, who once made Emmylou Harris cry as they sang their song ‘Emmylou’, named after her.
Perhaps it was merely the beauty of the band’s sound, perhaps it was the experience of having a tenderly emotion song, written during his youth, sung back at him in his old age now, or perhaps it was even the way that the two girls mirrored Simon and Garfunkel as a simple duo with a clear musical connection. Either way, it clearly moved Simon and pushed him to his feet as he gave the band a standing ovation.
