SONIC YOUTH'S "SUPERSTAR": THE GREATEST COVER EVER?

From NPR's Fresh Air, an interview with Richard Carpenter, who, with his sister Karen, scored a big hit with "Superstar" back in the early 70s:

GROSS: Okay, I'm going to make a confession to you here, okay? I used to think that you guys were really corny, and it took me a while to really like hear what was so good about, you know, the melodies, the arrangements, her singing. I mean, so it took me around to come around. I'll confess. But, so do you know the Sonic Youth version which was also referred to in the movie "Juno?"

Mr. CARPENTER: Yes I do.

GROSS: What'd you think of it?

Mr. CARPENTER: I don't like it.

GROSS: Why don't you like it?

Mr. CARPENTER: Why would I like it?

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. CARPENTER: No.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CARPENTER: At least when it comes to something like this, I will say I don't care for it but I don't understand it. So, I'm not going to say it's good or it's bad. I'm just going to say I don't care for it.

Read or listen to the rest here.

Earlier tonight at work somebody, after hearing me singing in the kitchen, suggested that we do some karaoke together in the future. I told him okay, but I do one song, and only one song, for karaoke, the Carpenters' version of "Superstar." I think that might have weirded him out a bit, which reminded me of the interview excerpted above. Suddenly I knew I had my post for tonight.

I've been a Carpenters fan since I was a kid, so when I heard the interview's promo during an installment of All Things Considered one afternoon last November, I had to check it out. It was interesting, of course, but the only thing I really remember from it today is that Richard Carpenter claims to not understand Sonic Youth's cover of the song he had a hit with forty years ago. Not liking it I can comprehend. But not understanding it? Okay, that's a bit weird. I mean, I understood it immediately.

I've been meaning to get into Sonic Youth for many many years, but I just never seem to have gotten round to it. Maybe now is the time. Their marvelous take on the much covered song stands in stark contrast to the famous version recorded by Richard and Karen. The Carpenters' rendition is straightforward and sad, very much from the perspective of the song's lyric voice, very much in the lost love tradition. Sonic Youth's version, however, amounts to commentary on the lyrics, and the media drenched culture in which we live today. That is, the notion of falling in love with a rock star, pining away for him for years, perhaps even stalking him, is downright creepy.

No, seriously. Check out the lyrics:

Long ago and oh so far away

I fell in love with you before the second show


Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear

But you're not really here

It's just the radio


Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby

You said you'd be coming back this way again baby

Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do


Loneliness is a such a sad affair

And I can hardly wait to be with you again


What to say to make you come again

Come back to me again

And play your sad guitar


Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby

You said you'd be coming back this way again baby

Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do

The Carpenters' emphasize what an asshole the rock star is for abandoning a girl who's too nice and innocent to be a groupie; Sonic Youth makes the girl out to be a celebrity obsessed lunatic. What's not to understand? It's pretty clear to me. Just listen to the two side by side.

Here's the Carpenters doing it:



Now check out the Sonic Youth version:



I'm sure you get the idea. Sonic Youth's "Superstar," with its brilliant recasting of the central protagonist as a crazy woman, becomes an anti-pop culture screed, ripping open the vile underbelly of America's fixation on, as well as media corporations' aggressive marketing of, the notion of stardom. I know that the mass media and its relationship with the masses have changed a great deal since Richard Carpenter recorded the song back in 1971, but it's not as though he's frozen in time. He lives in the same world that Sonic Youth and all of us do, the world of 2010.

How can he not understand Sonic Youth's take on "Superstar"?

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