EC Covered: Girl Talk swipes "Pump It Up"

I've been a fan of mashups for a couple years now, but no one has taken it to quite the luscious extremes of Girl Talk. His tunes are less mashups than total reimaginings of pop and hip-hop tracks built from the detritus of sound itself. It's like cutting together fifty different scenes from fifty different movies to create a new film, or swiping paragraphs from different novels to craft one whole story. 

On his latest album, Feed the Animals, Girl Talk executes a brilliant swipe of our very own Mr. Costello. Download, listen, enjoy, and give it time--the EC bit's a couple minutes in. 

Girl Talk - "Here's the Thing"

Elvis Covered: Fiona Apple, "I Want You"

Covers like this are the reason why I love cover songs. The original track off of Blood and Chocolate is a favorite of mine (and probably every EC fan's - let's be honest), but this performance from 2006's largely-forgettable Decades Live: Elvis Costello and Friends concert is maybe the most perfect version of the song I've heard.

Fiona Apple's voice is so goddamn emotive, and she plays the thrill ride change in tone over the course of the song - from devoted and plaintive to jealous to raging - for every bit of chilling pathos it's worth. The original is much more even-toned, which is atmospheric in its own way, but this is just one of those 'reach-into-your-chest-and-tear-your-heart-out'.

Elvis's guitar is as big a factor in the shape of the song. Check out that opening snarl at 1:06, a full-stop punctuation on the sugary intro, and the frenzied screech of the guitar solo in comparison to the original, laid-back break. This is a song about love being twisted into possessiveness, yeah, but this track also has murder on its mind.

This is, far and away, my favorite EC cover, ranking even higher than Weird Al's perennial, impromptu runs through "Radio, Radio." What's yours, and why?