Dionne War­wick:

Aretha Franklin and Dionne War­wick are two of the high­est chart­ing women in music his­to­ry. Between them, they’ve made 129 appear­ances in the Bill­board Hot 100. Two of those were with the same song: the 1966 Burt Bacharach and Hal David com­po­si­tion, “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer.”

The song was writ­ten espe­cial­ly for War­wick. David’s lyrics are about a wom­an’s dai­ly thoughts of her man, who is away in Viet­nam. Bacharach arranged and pro­duced the orig­i­nal record­ing in April of 1966, but was unhap­py with the result. “I thought I blew it,” he told the Los Ange­les Times in 1998. “The tem­po seemed too fast. I nev­er want­ed the record to come out. So what hap­pens? They put out the record and it was a huge hit. I was wrong.” The song was released over Bacharach’s objec­tions in Octo­ber, 1967 and rose to num­ber 4 on the Bill­board Hot 100 and num­ber 8 on the Bill­board R & B charts.

Aretha Franklin:

A few months after War­wick­’s sin­gle came out, Aretha Franklin and The Sweet Inspi­ra­tions were singing “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” for fun dur­ing a break in record­ing ses­sions for Aretha Now. Pro­duc­er Jer­ry Wexler liked what he heard, and decid­ed to record the song. With Franklin on piano and the Mus­cle Shoals Rhythm Sec­tion behind her, it was record­ed in one take. Franklin’s ver­sion has more of a gospel and rhythm & blues feel, with a flu­id call-and-response inter­play between the lead and back­up singers.

Released in July of 1968, the sin­gle was less of a crossover hit than War­wick­’s ver­sion — it peaked at num­ber 10 on the Hot 100 chart — but rose all the way to num­ber 3 on the R & B chart. Over­shad­owed at first, Franklin’s record­ing has grown in stature over the years. Even Bacharach likes it bet­ter than the one he made with War­wick. As he told Mitch Albom ear­li­er this year, “Aretha just made a far bet­ter record.”

You can lis­ten above, as War­wick per­forms “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” in an uniden­ti­fied tele­vi­sion broad­cast and Franklin sings it with the Sweet­hearts of Soul on the August 31, 1970 Cliff Richard Show. Tell us: Which ver­sion do you think is bet­ter?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aretha Franklin Per­forms ‘Respect’ Live in the South of France, 1970

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

She is 14 years old, and appar­ent­ly French. Not much else is known about this pre­co­cious young gui­tarist who goes by the name “Tina S” on her YouTube chan­nel.

Tina became an Inter­net sen­sa­tion in late May, when she post­ed an aston­ish­ing cov­er ver­sion of “Erup­tion,” from Van Halen’s debut album. Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolf­gang was so impressed he tweet­ed, “I need to meet this girl!!!”

Writ­ing as “@Tina_Guitare,” the young musi­cian replied, “I need to meet you too! Haha :))” Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres also went on Twit­ter and said, “This girl is incred­i­ble. If you know where she is, I want her on my show imme­di­ate­ly.” There was no reply to that one — at least not on Twit­ter.

Now Tina is back with a new video, made by her teacher Renaud Louis-Ser­vais, in which she rips through a cov­er of “Vival­di Trib­ute,” Patrick Ron­dat’s speed met­al adap­ta­tion of the cli­mac­tic “Presto” (very fast) move­ment of the Baroque com­pos­er Anto­nio Vivaldi’s “Sum­mer” con­cer­to from The Four Sea­sons. It’s an amaz­ing per­for­mance for a 14-year-old, although you should also see her play­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar when she was nine.

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I recent­ly read an arti­cle in which a music crit­ic argued for Bob Dylan’s 1970 dou­ble album Self Por­trait as his best. This pro­voked so much deri­sion and out­rage in the com­ments that I almost felt sor­ry for the author. But this is not unusu­al. Rolling Stone’s Greil Mar­cus opened his review of the record with a surly “What is this shit?” Dylan him­self explained in a 1984 inter­view with the mag­a­zine that the record was inten­tion­al­ly bad, a “screw you” to his less dis­cern­ing fans. And why not? Bob Dylan can do what­ev­er he wants.

Well, the album The Onion’s AV Club calls “almost uni­ver­sal­ly loathed” is being reis­sued in a four-disc set that includes out­takes and bootlegs, as well as alter­nates and demo takes from Nashville Sky­line and 1970’s New Morn­ing. You’ll find the full track­list of what will be released on August 27 as Anoth­er Self Por­trait here. (The album itself can be pre-ordered here.) For a pre­view, watch the video above of “Pret­ty Saro,” an 18^th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish folk tune Dylan record­ed for Self Por­trait but nev­er released. As with Mar­cus’ review and Dylan’s explana­to­ry inter­view, this comes to us via the stal­wart Rolling Stone.

Film­mak­er Jen­nifer Lebeau made the video, which con­sists of care­ful­ly select­ed pho­tos from the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion and which Lebeau says “lit­er­al­ly goes from women on farms with wag­ons to Rosie the Riv­et­er.” It’s a cool con­cept and a beau­ti­ful song. Might it per­suade you to re-eval­u­ate Self Por­trait? If you nev­er loathed it but defend­ed it, does this out­take enhance your appre­ci­a­tion of its genius? Maybe you’re in need of a refresh­er on the con­fused, amused, and infu­ri­at­ed reac­tions that this record gen­er­ates. If so, you may wish to vis­it this site for “24 min­utes of footage of peo­ple talk­ing about Bob Dylan’s puz­zling” 1970 album.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Bob Dylan, Nico & Sal­vador Dalí

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What is a “Rev­o­lu­tion”? The ques­tion might pre­cede a lengthy dis­qui­si­tion on polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy; it might presage a man­i­festo redefin­ing an old, worn-out term; it might open up a vinyl-era flight of the­o­ret­i­cal fan­cy over the qual­i­ta­tive dimen­sion of Rev­o­lu­tions Per Minute. As an open­ing gam­bit to a dis­cus­sion of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (and “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”), per­haps the ques­tion ven­tures on the truth of ver­sions, alter­nates, “takes,” as much a part of his­to­ry as top­pling regimes and mass move­ments.

How does all of this heav­i­ness get into pop music? Ask John Lennon. Well, no, ask his music. Ask the his­to­ry of his music, the alter­nates, the hid­den inten­tions, false starts, dis­card­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments. Ask, “Rev­o­lu­tion Take 20,” the alter­nate take of “Rev­o­lu­tion” that you hear above. “Rev­o­lu­tion 20” has a lot to say. It tells us about how a noisy, upbeat shoo­by-doo-wop blues pro­claim­ing the pow­er of love over vio­lence did not orig­i­nal­ly do so with such star­ry-eyed opti­mism and com­fort­ing pop brevi­ty (the kind of thing that sells Nikes, for instance). “Rev­o­lu­tion” had oth­er inten­tions, which we only glimpse in the song’s sev­ered ves­ti­gial tail “Rev­o­lu­tion 9,” and which we may have had quite enough of, thank you, in the arty weird­ness of Yoko Ono’s most exper­i­men­tal work.

You see, “Rev­o­lu­tion” and non-Nike-wor­thy “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” once belonged to the same ani­mal, a crea­ture that evolved from Lennon’s (and Ono’s) fas­ci­na­tion with musique con­crète, and with decon­struct­ing rock music into some­thing unrec­og­niz­able. The kind of rev­o­lu­tion “Rev­o­lu­tion 20” stages isn’t the dichoto­mous option between peace & love the­atrics or reac­tionary violence—it’s a rev­o­lu­tion of form, which is what Lennon seems to be after here, a new way of being that dis­solves con­tra­dic­tions in the sil­ly Freudi­an shtick of Paul McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son singing “Mama… Dada…” over and over as the clas­si­cal tropes of rock and roll warp and wob­ble around them in dis­in­te­grat­ing pitch shifts, radio noise, and spo­ken word non-sequiturs.

At over ten min­utes in length, “Rev­o­lu­tion Take 20”—which appeared as a mono mix on a 2009 boot­leg CD called Rev­o­lu­tion: Take… Your Knick­ers Off (after a piece of Lennon humor at the intro)—is more than an alter­nate take. It’s an alter­nate his­to­ry, one in which Lennon doesn’t just lay in bed for peace; he lays down on the stu­dio floor to record his vocals, and all the while his mind active­ly dis­as­sem­bles rock and roll. As the record­ing engi­neer Bri­an Gib­son remem­bers the ses­sion: “John decid­ed he would feel more com­fort­able on the floor so I had to rig up a micro­phone which would be sus­pend­ed on a boom above his mouth. It struck me as some­what odd, a lit­tle eccen­tric, but they were always look­ing for a dif­fer­ent sound; some­thing new.”

That Lennon ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to divide this mon­ster into Rev­o­lu­tions 1 & 9 does not mean that he’d giv­en up on mak­ing “some­thing new.” Per­haps it was a mar­ket­ing deci­sion; maybe he real­ized that he had a hit on his hands. Less, cyn­i­cal­ly, per­haps he felt that pop music could not con­tain the weight of his desire to move beyond, or to dis­solve, the seem­ing false choic­es on offer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Decon­struct­ing The Mas­ter Track of The Bea­t­les’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The 1992 song “Creep,” Radio­head’s anthem of self loathing and unre­quit­ed love, was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in one take.

The song had been writ­ten sev­er­al years ear­li­er by singer Thom Yorke, when he was still a stu­dent at Exeter Uni­ver­si­ty. “When I wrote it,” Yorke said in an ear­ly inter­view, “I was in the mid­dle of a real­ly, real­ly seri­ous obses­sion. It last­ed about eight months. And it was unsuc­cess­ful, which made it even worse. She knows who she is.”

The emo­tions were appar­ent­ly still run­ning deep when Yorke and his band­mates went into Chip­ping Nor­ton Stu­dios in their home­town of Oxford to record their debut album, Pablo Hon­ey. The raw, cathar­tic qual­i­ty of “Creep” caused an imme­di­ate stir, said pro­duc­er Paul Kolderie. “Every­one in the stu­dio applaud­ed when it was done.”

The orig­i­nal take was large­ly retained, except for a few touch-ups. Yorke went back into the stu­dio and record­ed a rewrit­ten first verse. He also agreed to change the sar­cas­tic phrase “You’re so fuck­ing spe­cial” to “You’re so very spe­cial” to make the song suit­able for Amer­i­can radio. You can hear Yorke’s vocals from the san­i­tized ver­sion in the iso­lat­ed track above. For the full arrange­ment, see the offi­cial video below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

A Mid­dle-East­ern Ver­sion of Radiohead’s 1997 Hit “Kar­ma Police”

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Radio­head-Approved, Fan-Made Film of the Band at Rose­land for 2011′s The King of Limbs Tour

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

A quick heads up: The Lol­la­palooza 2013 music fes­ti­val is get­ting going in Chica­go. And it’s stream­ing live (for free) all this week­end on YouTube. Right now, you can catch The Killers on stage. Nine Inch Nails will be per­form­ing lat­er tonight (Fri­day). You can find the line­up for Sat­ur­day and Sun­day here. Enjoy the shows.