We finish Cover Versions week with a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Rod Stewart scored his 4th number one in 1977 with two covers of acoustic classics – ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ and ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’. I was a bit hard on it when recapping (I gave it a ‘Meh’ Award), and by far the most memorable thing about the record is that it kept the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ off the top… fairly or otherwise.

But really, both songs are quite lovely. If either had topped the charts on their own, it would have been fine. Both together, with Rod dragging the arse out of them, and I got a bit bored. Luckily for us, there are plenty of other versions of both songs for us to get our teeth into.

Both songs existed before Rod got his hands on them. ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ was recorded by US band Crazy Horse, for their first album after Neil Young had left them to form Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Stewart didn’t stray very far from this when recording his own hit version. It’s very early-seventies country-rock, and hides a tragic backstory in the fact that the writer (and singer of this original) Danny Whitten would die of a drug overdose barely a year after it was recorded.

For something a bit different, we’d have to wait until 1988, when Everything But the Girl made #3 with their own version. In truth, it’s more the band performing it that makes this one stand out, as it’s a similarly heartfelt, acoustic take, albeit it with a few more strings. This was the duo’s only Top 10 hit between their debut in 1982, and their now signature song ‘Missing’ in 1995.

‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’ dates back further than ‘I Don’t Want…’, as it was written by Cat Stevens in 1965. Stevens sold the song for thirty pounds to US soul singer P.P. Arnold, who was the first to have a hit with it in 1967. Her version has an interesting production: part-Motown, part-sixties beat band, part-soul stomper… Sonically it’s more enjoyable, for me, than any of the more straightforward, guitar-led versions.

Cat Stevens would eventually record his own version as an album track, while it was a Canadian number one in 1973 in a particularly strident version by Keith Hampshire. Then thirty years later, Sheryl Crow brought the song back to the charts with a fairly predictable cover, put out as the ‘new’ single on a Best Of album. By far the most unusual cover of ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’, though, came in 1995 from Swedish rapper Papa Dee. It’s a classic slice of mid-nineties reggae-pop, complete with an Ace of Base beat and a ragga break in the middle. I’m suprised it wasn’t a hit in the UK, given how many reggae interludes we’ve enjoyed in recent months. Still, it was popular across Europe, especially in Scandivania, where it went Top 10 in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

I hope you’ve enjoyed ‘Cover Versions’ week, and have perhaps heard a version of a well-known hit that was new to you. I know I did! This weekend we’ll get back to more familiar songs, and artists, starting with possibly the most anticipated single of the 1990s.