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Run For Cover is a weekly music column comparing cover songs to the original version. Prepare for a major bending of rules as we hear musicians throw around genres, tempos, style, and intent. Whether they’re picking up another’s song out of respect or boredom, the results have impressed us.
It’s over a hundred degrees in an open-door art studio in Texas when I hear a song that would haunt me for years. The voice was powerful but worn, the song dance-heavy but calming, the lyrics detached but reaching out. Years later and no longer seven years old, I heard the song again on the radio and finally learned I had Cher to thank for “Believe.”
It’s one of the most commercially successful singles to date.
The American star created 1998’s dance-pop song that would peak on over 20 different countries’ charts in part due to its use of techno and house music. Auto-Tune was used to give the wobbling effect of losing control of her voice.
This, believe (heh) it or not, is dubbed the “Cher Effect.”
In fact, Cher’s a bit of a wonder. She’s won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and the Best Actress Award from the Cannes Film Festival. Starting with her folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher and progressing all the way to her distinctive contralto singing voice, her continuous reinventing of her music—not to mention her trendsetting fashion styles (à la the ’70s and ’80s) and Broadway roles—awarded her the title Goddess of Pop.
Portland, Maine’s folk rock singer-songwriter Lady Lamb the Beekeeper (Aly Spaltro’s moniker) took the song and twisted it in her hands last year, wringing out every teardrop and sigh hidden behind the original’s club beats. Auto-Tune emotion is traded for confrontational singing because the song is, underneath it all, quite sad.
At a Backyard Brunch Session in New York, Spaltro explained why she covered the song. Even though her cover is “nothing like the original because the original is scary,” she was quick to defend Cher.
“If you really listen to the words—which it’s hard to hear the words because it’s masked under this beat—it’s so sad.”
“She’s like, ‘I feel something inside me say that I really don’t think I’m strong enough … No matter how hard I try, you keep pushing me aside and I can’t break through. There’s no talking to you.’ Because the other person’s like, ‘I’m done.’”
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper leaves the remnants of the song, sans-electronic everything, on a clothesline to dry.
The guitar shakes out like a western walk, confronting this fear of love, as Spaltro’s voice shakes inside a cold cave. Slow percussion backs her up. The volume diminishes until finally all that’s left is that same worn voice and tired soul I first heard in a boiling Texan art studio at age seven.
The only way to make this song more powerful than a confronting cover is hearing it live. Lady Lamb the Beekeeper is known for the raw energy and intensity given at her shows, where reliving it through recordings or videos never does it justice—although it never hurts to watch (especially when it’s in our city).