Tricky things, albums of cover versions. It's widely known that the worst album ever recorded is Thank You by Duran Duran – seriously boys, 911 Is A Joke? – with runners up including albums of covers by Rod Stewart and Kevin Rowland.
Surely, we thought, surely not even painfully cool producer du jour Mark Ronson could manage to craft an album of cover versions that wouldn't make us tear it from our CD player and hurl it into the skull of the nearest passer-by after a single spin, could he? Well, Mark Ronson doesn't care what we think, so he's made an album of covers anyway, and called it Version. And somehow, gloriously, Mark Ronson's Version works. Just.
Before we get going, it's probably fair that we disclose our ferocious love for Here Comes The Fuzz, the first album by Mark Ronson – it was an eclectic, technicolour explosion that could barely contain itself on CD, and genuinely no music collection is complete without it. But the signs were a little different for Version, the new Mark Ronson album.
Where Here Comes The Fuzz was an album firmly planted in the States – with guest stars like Ghostface Killah and Sean Paul – Version is almost compulsively British. Lily Allen singing a Kaiser Chiefs song? Amy Winehouse singing The Zutons? Kasabian? Maximo Park? Robbie Williams? On paper, Version looks like Mark Ronson's suicide note.
And then you listen to Version, and everything changes. For Version, Mark Ronson has ditched the kaleidoscopic hip-hop of his first album for one simple trick – baggy drums and Motown horns. And from the outset of Version opener God Put A Smile On Your Face, you can't help but agree that the trick's got a lot going for it – Coldplay's whinge rendered into an old-fashioned instrumental dance tune, a pre-electronic dance tune, that obliterates the original beyond all recognition. Although it's not even Version's most staggering feat – that comes when Lily Allen sings Oh My God by The Kaiser Chiefs and the results don't make us want to drown ourselves – God Put A Smile On Your Face is most certainly the sound of Mark Ronson laying out the unswerving blueprint for the rest of Version.
And that blueprint ends up being both Version's blessing and curse. Mark Ronson has stuck 14 tracks on Version, and by the end of the first one you know exactly what you'll be getting, which – when coupled with the fact that you already know how all of these songs go before you've bought the album – destroys any notion of surprise that the album could have had.
So although the tunes on Version that work – the cover of Toxic by Britney Spears featuring a guest rap by dear departed Ol' Dirty Bastard, Amy Winehouse making Valerie by The Zutons considerably less annoying, Santo Gold's version of Pretty Green by The Jam – work almost beyond compare, the brittle spine of the album means that Phantom Planet's Just, Kenna's Amy and, worst offender of all, Robbie Williams singing The Only One I Know by The Charlatans may as well just all be retitled Skip This One Please.
There are a bunch of reasons why Version by Mark Ronson is only half brilliant. You could say that the bulk of the songs chosen are so contemporary that the album lacks depth overall, or that it contains maybe three too many tracks. We, however, blame cover fatigue. And that's the fault of that ubiquitous Live Lounge album from Christmas – if you've heard The Kooks cover Gnarls Barkley you'd be blaming it too. So if Version by Mark Ronson fails, we're pinning it all on Jo Wiley. Having said that, we'd blame all wars and general unhappiness on Jo Wiley if it looked likely that people would buy it.
Simon says
Shut up! Kevin Rowland’s “My Beauty” must be the most underrated album ever. Seriously, have you heard it? I doubt it! Did it have about 20 sales? It’s fantastic.