Cupid by Sam Cooke
Cupid by Amy Winehouse
Monday’s newsletter was on a song by The Platters that Sam Cooke covered. Today’s focuses on a song written and performed by Sam Cooke, Cupid, covered by Amy Winehouse in 2006.
While Cooke smoothly croons the song he so delicately composed, Winehouse’s version is slightly more complex and harder to identify, lending itself to a looser, more playful tradition closely related to jazz-cabaret, with an added touch of soul, reggae, and blues. The original is like a smooth single malt, the cover an emulsive cocktail of intoxicating character. In this case, like with single malt, I prefer the original to the cover, which says a lot, considering how talented Amy Winehouse was.
Funnily, Cooke was commissioned to write Cupid for a model and singer that had performed regularly on Perry Como’s TV shows. Once they heard her sing it, they decided to let Cooke keep the song for himself. Perhaps it was never meant to be covered after all, with Cupid’s fatal arrow destined for no one but himself. Meh, that sentence didn’t really work, but you get the point.