There is no Linda Thompson but Kelly Clarkson, and Ted Leo is her Richard, or, I am a crank

[Edit: apparently the cover, that I thought was just a cover of "Since U Been Gone", is also a cover of a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, in what you might call a medley.  This revelation has confused and hurt me, and I think I will cry.]

The cool kids have known about it for weeks, but not I.  And actually now that I bother to listen to it I think the Clarkson original of "Since U Been Gone" isn't all that great.  BUT, but! Ted Leo's live cover (downloadable from link above) has something about it that is highly reminiscent of Richard Thompson.

No, really.  His voice is higher, the song itself is decidedly more vernacular, and not as bleak as Thompson's, and the guitar playing isn't that similar—Thompson playing a similarly themed song would be more restrained, and slower (consider his excellent cover of "Oops! I Did It Again").  The nature of the lyrics are the real sticking point; even though it's clearly thematically something Thompson would sing & has sung about, the lyrics just don't sound like him (and it's not like songs about failed love are hard to come by).  Same problem with "Oops!".

So why is it that listening even to Thompson's own cover of "Oops! I Did It Again" I don't get the feeling of listening to a Richard Thompson song, but listening to Ted Leo's cover of a Kelly Clarkson song I do?  It's because, I've decided, of the line "Wait—they don't love you like I love you", which is repeated nine times towards the end of the song (all that follows is another chorus), sung in a yearning/aching voice, which is highly reminiscent of the end of "Small Town Romance" (the live acoustic version as played on the eponymous album), in which the line "see—she never loved him anyway" is repeated six times in exactly the same way.  Also the lines themselves are very similar in construction and content.

You might not think that's very interesting, but it was driving me mad until I figured it out.

Extra bonus crank: the line "I even fell for stupid love songs" is totally obviously meant to reply to the lines "All the love letters you wrote / will be pushed back down your throat / and leave you choking" from "When the Spell is Broken".  Duh.

Comments

[Craig]

Ben, your help is requested. Have you ever noted the phonological similarity between "reign of terror" and "rain of terra"? With you work on barque/bight scholarship, I thought you might be able to suggest some directions for a punne, or play on words.

[Anthony Smith]

So is this a Clarkson/Yeah Yeah Yeah's cover?

[ben wolfson]

Craig: since you sent me an email all of three hours before leaving that comment, thereby demonstrating that you know my email address, I confess to a certain amount of bafflement as to your reason for leaving that comment (as one leaves droppings) rather than sending me another email. I will think about what you suggest, but it seems to me like the type of joke told by humorless hippy/environmental types. I prefer my jokes to be humorless on their own merits.

Incidentally, Chris, Tammy and Andrew E-C join me in expecting no less of any woman with whom you'd take up than that she would have escaped from Kathmandu while it was under military quarantine.

AS: No, just Clarkson.

[Anthony Smith]

Well that "they don't love you like I love you" is the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Maps.

[ben wolfson]

In that case the answer is "yes", and Matt Haughey is GOD DAMN LIAR.