Will You Love Me Tomorrow

January–February 1961

How to Ruin a Great Song

An Unscientific Study

Our next song, I hope most people would agree, is a pretty rad song. It's the first of several smash hits by the girl group The Shirelles, and the first #1 by any group of that genre; it remains one of the best. Written by Carole King, it features a great, memorable melody; and lead singer Shirley Owens lends it a cool, confident air, helped in no small part by its distinctive string arrangement. This track will serve as the basis for our analysis:

This song, in particular, is notable for having an insane number of cover versions by all kinds of famous musicians. I have not the patience to listen to all of them, but of the one's I've found, they are uniformly boring (with the unsurprising exception of King's own version from her Tapestry album). There are versions of the song by the likes of Dusty Springfield, Cher, Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Joe Walsh, Neil Diamond, The Bee Gees, and countless others; there's even a hilarious version by a very young Ronnie James Dio. However, this being a blog focused on the most popular of songs, I will examine the 3 covers which made it to the top 40.

1968 - The Four Seasons

This rendition's major offenses are twofold. The first is its annoyingly busy arrangement, featuring violins, surf guitar, organ, a frantic bass guitar, and what sounds like a harpsichord. And it's almost as if the song's producers realized this, because they mixed the vocals way above the instruments, creating the effect of the Four Seasons' voices floating above a horrible, swirling chaos.

The second offense is that the harmony of the song is changed, in a forced attempt to make the version differ from the original. The result is that the song remains totally recognizable, but without the lean, economical punch of the Shirelles' version. For example, the reason that one string hook in the original (you know the one) works so well is because 1) it's the only featured instrument in that particular bar, and 2) it's simple and elegant, blending gracefully with the minimal, carefully selected chord pattern. And this is to say nothing of the song's main vocal melody.

1975 - Morningside Drive

This version is curiously unavailable online, so I have not heard it. However, it is purportedly a disco arrangement of the song. Have we really any reason to believe it doesn't completely suck?

1978 - Dave Mason

Mason, of Traffic fame, recorded this bland-as-beans cover, apparently while simultaneously doing his taxes. He simply does not care in the least about the song; it has a distinct "goin' through the motions" feel. The song suffers from an overly slick, late-70s pop production, and lackadaisical, non-shit-giving performances by everyone involved. Accordingly, this track has been largely banished to a far corner of history.

Conclusion

So what have we learned? The moral of the story is, don't cover a classic, time-honored song. There are very few examples of this ever succeeding in history. Unless you truly think you have some amazing new insight into it, just leave it alone. Your version will inevitably be damned by comparison to the far superior original. We will not still love it tomorrow.

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