What’s the point of these soul covers? Bruce Springsteen’s Only the Strong Survive reviewed

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Arthur Mann

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What’s the worst-ever cover version (after Madonna’s hilarious stab at ‘American Pie’)? I reckon Creedence Clearwater Revival’s interminable mangling of ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, or maybe the J. Geils Band stamping over ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ in hobnail boots – two bands I otherwise adore. Jeff Beck boring his way through ‘Superstition’? The Stranglers wrecking ‘Walk on By’? All Saints ripping the guts out of ‘Lady Marmalade’? I think you catch my drift, because the lesson is pretty clear: no, really, do not play that funky music, white boy.

Brucie gets away with this album of familiar, but in the main not over-familiar, soul covers because he is studiously faithful to the originals and in any case the songs informed his rather grandiose take on pub rock. The Commodores’ ‘Nightshift’ retains its 1980s sheen, although Bruce has removed the horrible burbling bass guitar, such a signifier of its time. He possibly improves Frank Wilson’s northern soul stomp of ‘Do I love You (Indeed I Do)’ because the song never really suited Wilson’s near falsetto. Jerry Butler’s title track is terrific, but then so was the original. Tyrone Davis’s ‘Turn Back the Hands of Time’ loses a little of its early 1970s rough edges – here the hands of time are moved forwards by 50 years. I have heard ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ too many times to accurately judge if Bruce imbues it with passion and panache, but I did enjoy it more than I expected. Trouble is, it’s not very difficult to track down the originals these days – and so if you’re not going to change them much, what’s the point of the exercise?