Songbird: Original and Cover-which is better?

[David]

Eva Cassidy sounds (or sounded) like a hundred other singers. In all that "purity" & "beauty," you'd be hard-pressed to locate anything that stamps Eva as an indivual style, one you could pick out at fifty paces. Furthermore, what's operating here is what I would call sonic redundancy: Why surround a syrupy, overtly "beautiful" singer with a syrupy, overtly "beautiful" arrangement & production? It's too conventional. It turned Christine's "little prayer" into a mawkish spectacle.

Christine, on the other hand (or foot), sings & phrases so individually as to be recognizable even in two-second snippets from unnamed sources. Chris developed one of the most singular, individual vocal styles of that era. It's like a Billie Holiday situation. Nobody sounds like Christine. Nobody sings just the way she does.