As a general rule, cover projects by songwriters creative in their own right make for fairly interesting listening. As part of his Scratch My Back project, Peter Gabriel got several of the artists whose songs he covered to cover one of his in turn; these have been issued as singles on iTunes. Paul Simon's version of "Biko" is a fine argument for the cover song genre. His stripped-down, guitar-centric rendering of Peter Gabriel's ominous anthem takes on the tone of a funereal lament while giving renewed plausibility to the thoughtful apartheid-era lyrics. In the same vein, David Byrne's cover of "I Don't Remember" gets at the original's frenetic sensibility while making it very much his own dance tune. On the other hand, Lou Reed takes a hatchet to "Solsbury Hill," turning all his latent misanthropy loose on what is, admittedly, a rather frail reed which Peter Gabriel was able to make a perennial radio favorite purely on the strength of an unabashedly sentimental and sincere performance. Peter Gabriel probably shouldn't have asked Lou Reed to contribute a track.
And actually, he shouldn't have attempted any covers himself. The album itself is monotonous; every song is performed at approximately the same slow beat. Peter Gabriel tries to turn everything into either a lullaby or a dirge or both. Take, for instance, his cover of "Boy in the Bubble." The first song on the still-astounding Graceland, Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble" was a frantic collage of dystopian imagery, heavily dependent on wordplay and a quick beat. By slowing it way, way down, Peter Gabriel makes all those stunning word pictures sound mildly silly. What was originally a panicked take on a world spinning completely out of control has become kind of boring.
I don't know what's happened to Peter Gabriel. Maybe hanging out with Richard Branson and the Elders has completely dulled his artistic edge.
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