Nobody can cover Neil

Even though the endless use of slow versions of old pop songs has become a total joke with their ubiquity in movie trailers, it hasn't diminished my thirst for a great cover song. Many of my favourite tunes are reinterpretations of old classics, given new life and new meaning with a different 

I dig it when Johnny Dowd gives old Rolling Stones tune a makeover, think Johnny cash's final albums are some of the very best things he ever did, and there are a million great covers of Dolly Parton's songs. For a year or so I listened to almost nothing but reinterpretations of Pink Floyd songs, of all shapes and sizes, and I genuinely think Nirvana's unplugged version of Man Who Sold The World is transcendentally great.

But the only cover versions I have no time for are Neil Young songs. I've seen Young twice and both times were magical - one more than the other for my lovely wife - and his high and thin delivery is so ideally suited for the tunes he writes, that any attempt to add something new to them never works. 

There have been a hundred different Hearts of Gold, and none of them ever have the same magic without Young, often reducing it to cheesy schmaltz. And there have been untold reinventions of Hey Hey My My, and they just don't don't have that juxtaposition between Young's delivery and his crunching guitar sound.

He's a great songwriter who writes great songs, no wonder everybody wants to have a crack at them. But some things are just perfect first time, and don't require any do-overs.