I had a dream a few nights ago that a young girl with straight blond hair - probably no more than twelve years old - had a surprise indie hit with an acoustic cover version of Wreckless Eric’s 1979 single Walking on the surface of the moon. Perhaps I need to get out more…

The strange thing is not that I was hallucinating nonexistent cover versions of old new wave hits - that’s pretty much a given - but that she was *good*. It was no novelty children’s track either - she played it straight and belted out a good pacey version that was at least as good as the original. I think she’s got a future in pop music - or would if she actually existed.

If anyone has any tips on finding nonexistent tracks by nonexistent singers, I’d appreciate some advice.

I’d been on a bit of a Johnny Cash binge, marvelling at the incredible dignity, gravitas and depth he brought to all of his later work. His earlier stuff is fine, good to listen to, often a lot of fun, but the “American” series of albums produced by Rick Rubin, which crowned his career - well, they’re something special. It’s a hell of a long way from A Boy Named Sue to his astonishing treatments of Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat” (Cash, Cave) or Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (Cash, Nails). (Not that I can say a word against any song that includes a line like “Kickin’ and a gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer’)

So - I was listening to “I hung my head” from “American IV: The Man Comes Around” and was bowled over by it. It’s classic Johnny Cash material - about shooting someone, partly through accident, partly through youthful stupidity, and partly just to watch him die - and then getting to spend the spend the rest of your life regretting it. I knew that he spent his last few albums doing some pretty strange cover versions, so I looked on covertrek.com - where else? - to see who wrote it.

And it was Sting? You’ve got to be kidding me.

One of my great regrets about CoverTrek is that I’ve had to proceed on the assumption that if two people have the same name they’re the same person, and that if two songs have the same title they’re the same song. This just isn’t the case, and I know it’s not, but most of the sources I collect data from don’t have the provision for proper metadata, and those that do don’t necessarily fill it in. I’m always afraid of finding corruption in the database, or nonsense entries caused by accidentally coinciding names, and I thought that must be what had happened here.

A couple of minutes with Google told me that it really was by Sting. And the original is so insipid. It’s as wet as a chicken in a rainstorm. It’s overproduced and whiney and just so… so not Johnny Cash. How did Sting end up writing this? And how did Cash - or perhaps Rubin - spot it for the gem it could be?

I hung my head - Johnny Cash
I hung my head - Sting

Notes:

• Links are to the Amazon mp3 download store, where you can listent to a snippet of the song for free. I’m afraid that only American residents can purchase from there. This isn’t my fault, and given the complexities of musical rights ownership, it may not even be Amazon’s fault.
• Sting was pretty decent in The Police.