Joe Jackson - You Can't Be Too Strong - Cover Versions, 1995 - 2003

Last week, Joe Jackson released a new album called "Fool." It's really good, and I'm not just saying that, because I have no incentive to hype him. To celebrate, I'm going to post more stuff from him.

Jackson is a great singer-songwriter. But since the late 1990s especially, he's peppered his concerts with occasional cover versions, and it turns out he's very good at singing other people's songs too. I've made three albums of all the covers he's done that I could find in suitable sound quality. Here's the first one.

When Jackson does covers, he often likes to do them completely solo, just himself and his piano. About half of the songs here are like that and the rest are with his band. The vast majority are done live. As I usually do, I removed the crowd noise whenever I could manage to do it without cutting anything important. Six of the songs here have been officially released.

There are a couple of songs where the sound quality is less than ideal. I'm thinking of "Drive-In Saturday," "Karma Police," and "Heroes." But I think they sound good enough. A notch below is "Junkie Girl," so I only included that as a bonus track for those who don't mind sound quality issues so much. There are even more covers I could have included except the sound quality was worse, and too bad for me to deem even as bonus tracks.

Here are the artists Jackson covers on this album: XTC, Radiohead, the Yardbirds, the Beatles (twice), Steely Dan (also the bonus track), the Lovin' Spoonful, David Bowie (twice), Graham Parker, Crowded House, Todd Rundgren, and Ron Sexsmith.

I made some significant edits to "For Your Love." Jackson has always played it as a medley with his own "Fools in Love." For this album, I had to split it from the medley to stand on its own. But it turns out he only played about half of the song, doing about a minute of soloing and a minute of singing. So I added in another instrumental section from a different part of the medley that fit musically, and then repeated the minute of singing at the end. I think it sounds like an entire song now, instead of half of one.

01 Statue of Liberty (Joe Jackson)
02 Karma Police (Joe Jackson)
03 Senses Working Overtime (Joe Jackson)
04 For Your Love [Edit] (Joe Jackson)
05 Eleanor Rigby (Joe Jackson)
06 King of the World (Joe Jackson)
07 Summer in the City (Joe Jackson)
08 Drive-In Saturday (Joe Jackson)
09 For No One (Joe Jackson)
10 You Can't Be Too Strong (Joe Jackson)
11 'Heroes' (Joe Jackson)
12 I Feel Possessed (Joe Jackson)
13 Couldn't I Just Tell You (Joe Jackson)
14 Don't Ask Why (Joe Jackson)

Junkie Girl (Joe Jackson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15906925/JoeJacks_1995-2003_YouCntBeTooStrong_atse.zip.html

The cover art comes from a still of a YouTube video of Jackson playing a song in the studio in 2001.