Under The Covers: Bad by Ray Stevens
Text By: Brian Henegar
Message him at brianh_j@yahoo.com to give him feedback & comments

Much like the great roles of the theater, songs can be and should be open to interpretation. These re-recordings, “covers” as they are known, can have a surprising effect on the song they choose to honor. They can bring new depth and feeling to a familiar tune. They can re-imagine a song and give it new life. In some cases, they can even eclipse the original in popularity and scope. And of course sometimes, they are just a quick way for a singer to cash in and make a fast buck.

Not every cover is good, obviously. But there are some covers that are so awful, so notoriously bad, that they stick in your mind…not unlike a dull toothache. The purpose of this column is to highlight these infamous covers, show them for what they are, and analyze their failure. Many of these covers are by artists who should have known better, but have etched an indelible, if somewhat embarrassing spot in the history of recorded music.
So whaddaya say kids?...let’s boogie!

CASE FILE NO. 1
“BAD”
Original Artist: Michael Jackson
Cover Artist: Ray Stevens
Year: 1988

Country music experienced once of its biggest boom periods during the 1980s and early 1990s. Artists like Clint Black, Trisha Yearwood, Lorrie Morgan, Garth Brooks, and George Strait, to name a few began dominating the airwaves. In fact, country music was featured at the halftime show of Super Bowl XXVIII. Country was hot again, and one of the most surprising stars, was an artist of novelty songs named Ray Stevens.



Born Harold Ray Ragsdale in 1939 in Georgia, Stevens got his start playing what a small band at 16 called “The Barons.” He had a few small hits that helped him get noticed and soon he was signed as a solo artist to the NRC record label. Stevens always had an appreciation for the sillier side of music, citing Spike Jones and Phil Harris as his primary influences. When he started out, however, Stevens tried to have the best of both worlds. His early records would feature both serious and funny songs. This would make for some unusual tones in his records, since you might have a serious, socially conscious song like “Mr. Businessman” or “Everything is Beautiful” right next to something funny like “Guitarzan.” In 1974, however, Stevens struck it rich with what is perhaps, his best known song of all time.



For reasons that have never been adequately explained, the 1970s saw a weird trend where people would strip off all their clothes and run through public places (as an aside, it was always someone you never really wanted to see naked in the first place. Jennifer Love Hewitt would never be caught streaking, for example, but some dumpy 300 pound guy with a beer belly would be more than happy to run around in the altogether…but I digress). Stevens took the ball and ran with it, recording the novelty country single “The Streak.” The single sold five million copies in six weeks, and launched Stevens career. It also turned Stevens in a full-time novelty artist. Over the years that followed, Stevens would have several more novelty hits. Including “Ahab the Arab”, “It’s Me Again Margaret”, “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival” and several others.

An interesting quirk about Stevens’ career was that he has at times been both a trailblazer and a copycat in country music. He was one of the first country artists to see the potential of music videos, and made several that became CMT staples. And since back then, it seemed like every other single country video used the same format (singer sits on the porch of a weathered old house, while mournfully strumming a six-string and singing about his Daddy), his videos managed to stand out.


Seriously, watch this video, you’ll get a chuckle.

But, Stevens also can be accused of going to the well far too many times, and copying what everyone else does. For instance, in the early-to-mid 2000s, when lots of singers were making a sing-along Rat Pack tribute album, Stevens tried to jump on the bandwagon with an album called “Ray Stevens sings Sinatra…Say What??” in 2009. And it was this willingness to go back to whatever has worked in the past that leads us to today’s case study.



In 1975, Stevens released an album called Misty that featured, among other things, a bluegrass cover of the classic Johnny Mathis song “Misty.” The song was an instant hit, winning Ray a Grammy award for the now-defunct “Best Arrangement” Category. Stevens would then, on multiple occasions, attempt to recapture the lightning in a bottle of that song. He famously did a cover of Sammi Smith’s classic “Help Me Make it Through the Night” in 1992, that worked mostly due to Spike Jones-inspired insanity and a Hellzapoppin’ music video. Recently, Ray has tried to strike gold again with a bluegrass version of “Unchained Melody.” However, in 1988, Stevens decided to set his sights on the King of Pop. The end result was something that…well…has to be heard to be believed.



Released in 1987, “Bad” was the title track of the Michael Jackson album of the same name, and it was Jacko’s attempt at a more harder-edged sound. The song is one of Jacko’s best, aided by a driving bass line, a relentless tempo, and a video that would inspire one of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s finest. Though the album wouldn’t sell quite as well as the world-conquering “Thriller,” it is still a classic and one of the greatest albums of the 1980s.

Stevens’ cover of “Bad” starts off straight enough, but soon devolves. First Stevens affects a fake-as-all-hell country-fried accent to perform the song. Ray then adds all the accoutrements of his trademark sound: Female backup singers, a brass section, fiddles, banjos, and a general Nashville “countrypolitan” style that manages to strip away much of the simplicity of the original track. What hurts the recording is that the song doesn’t sound like authentic bluegrass. Real bluegrass has a gritty earthiness that is obvious to the listener. Here, the production is too slick, too artificial to be mistaken for a bluegrass sound.

The other problem is that “Bad” just doesn’t work all that well as a bluegrass song. Now, this is not to say that pop and rock songs can’t be “country-fied” as it were. The Gourds managed to make a surprisingly listenable bluegrass cover of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” and there is an entire bluegrass band called Hayseed Dixie that does nothing but bluegrass covers of hard rock songs in their act. But, the lyrics and orchestration of “Bad” just don’t lend themselves to the genre shift. Then there’s the odd ending where, for reasons known only to himself, Stevens starts mimicking a cow, a sheep, and a clucking chicken. It’s as if Ray realized that the novelty of hearing Michael Jackson by way of Kentucky wasn’t enough to even sustain a three-minute song, so he tried throwing everything at the track to try to get a chuckle. It didn’t work.

Ray Stevens has had multiple good songs, but this wasn’t one of them. In fact, it just comes off as a one-note joke that got old before the song even ended. It has been years since Stevens has been relevant in the country or comedy worlds. Today, he is focusing on pandering to the tea party crowd, and hawking CDs of re-recorded comedy songs on infomercials. Which somehow, seems almost appropriate.

NEXT TIME
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