What can you change before a song becomes somebody else’s?

Give two singers the same song and ask them to come in without discussing how it goes. You can learn a lot before either reaches the second verse. One person leaves room at the end of a line because there is something to think about there. The other gets straight into the next line because the person in the song is in a hurry. The words and tune can survive both decisions. The person you imagine singing them might change completely.

Two records released on 13 November put this kind of decision out in the open. Radie Peat’s No Human Tongue Can Tell is her solo debut, and includes the traditional ballad ‘Willow Garden’. 20th Century Paddy collects versions of songs associated with Shane MacGowan, including Jessie Buckley and Hozier singing ‘Fairytale of New York’. They give us a good reason to take a pair of headphones or a guitar and spend some time with a question that usually gets reduced to whether a cover is better than the original. What part of the song would you keep if the rest of the arrangement had to go?

The verse someone bothered to write down

In the Rough Trade note that accompanies Peat’s live ‘Willow Garden’, she describes a tune recorded under a related title in the Bunting collection in Ireland in 1810, without lyrics, and a ballad that survived in Appalachia. That is Peat’s account of the evidence. There is a considerable distance between a tune in a collection and a particular text put to it, and the note leaves us with room to think about what could have happened in between.

Peat also gives a much more intimate account of the last verse she uses. Matt Kinman wrote it down for her in Sylva, North Carolina, after learning it from a man he had lived with in the mountains. That bit of the story is specific enough that you can follow the chain for a couple of links. Somebody sang it, somebody remembered it, somebody bothered to get it onto paper. A verse with that kind of history can be new to a singer and old to the person who passed it on.

The story in ‘Willow Garden’ is grim. A man sings about killing a woman and facing the consequences. If you put that story in a beautiful tune, the tune can do something uncomfortable. It can make it easy to keep listening when you might otherwise want to turn away. It can also make the man’s account sound so familiar that you let him lead you through it without stopping to ask who gets to speak. A singer working on a ballad like this has choices about which words get space, how quickly a verse passes and whether the next chord comes in before the last sentence has landed. There is a lot of judgement in a decision as small as taking a breath.

The label’s page links to the Western AF session filmed at The Hut in Dublin. Put that performance alongside the six-minute album track. Start with the same verse in each. Listen for where a line ends in relation to the next sound you can hear. The gap may be short enough to measure in a beat or long enough that counting gets in the way. Either way, there is a useful distinction between the time a musician leaves and the time the words seem to need. That is worth trying in a room of your own.

A song with two people in it

With ‘Fairytale of New York’, a lot of listeners arrive knowing how two people are supposed to sound. Even somebody who cannot tell you the chords might know who is about to interrupt whom. Buckley and Hozier inherit a duet associated with Kirsty MacColl and MacGowan. The official release page links to the new recording and video, and gives you the names to look for if the song has already come up three times in a search.

A duet like this poses an odd problem for anyone who learns from a record. It is easy to practise your own part until you can sing it in your sleep. You can still be miles away from making a conversation. The line you are answering may be the only reason your own line means what you think it means. If you rehearse exclusively to the recording, the other singer arrives at the same place every time. Put an actual person across from you and suddenly you have to decide whether you are waiting for a cue, waiting for them to finish or deliberately cutting them off.

There is a way to test that before you rehearse a single harmony. Read the exchange aloud with a partner. Let the first person choose their pace and ask the second person to answer when the reply makes sense to them. Do it again with the opposite instruction. This time the second person has permission to come in as soon as they know what the first is going to say. The difference might be a fraction of a second. It can turn a reply into an interruption, or make somebody sound as though they have been waiting for years to say what comes next.

Then bring the accompaniment back. There will be places where the band has to know exactly when to move. Pick those places together. A held chord can give the singers a little time, provided everybody has a cue for its release. A relentless count can serve a quarrel perfectly well when the whole point is that neither person has time to reconsider. You can discover which way the scene works by rehearsing both, and it costs less time than arguing about which version has the better production.

Try it with a song you already know

Choose something you can sing through in the key you have. A verse and a chorus are enough. Ask one person in the room to take down the words they hear, especially if the rest of you have been singing the song for years. Someone who has never learnt it may hear a different word entirely. If that word turns out to matter to the story, you have found something you can work on before buying another pedal or trying to sing louder.

Record a quick pass on your phone. For the second pass, change one thing. A band might keep the original tempo and lose the fill between the lines. A guitarist might hold one chord through the place where the usual arrangement changes. Two singers might swap who takes the first line. Keep the recording level and position roughly the same so that the louder take does not win by default. Then listen from the start of the verse through the first line of the chorus. Ask your listener to tell you what the singer wants at that point in the song. You will get a more useful answer than you would by asking which version they liked.

Imagine the example is a song about a person waiting on a platform. The first verse can make you think they are waiting for the train. A later line gives you the information that someone else was supposed to be there. In a rehearsal you could have the drums fill over that line and push straight into the chorus. You could also leave the voice out on its own for a couple of beats. With the fill you might get the sense that the train is going and the singer has to move. With the space you might hear the moment they realise they are leaving alone. Those are different stories. There is no reason to settle the arrangement before you have tried telling both.

It is worth keeping the first recording, even if everybody prefers the second. Come back after a day or two and check whether what felt like a wonderful new idea still says something you want the audience to hear. A change sometimes feels terrific because it lets the players surprise each other. You can enjoy that and still restore the old ending before the gig. Conversely, a version that felt exposed in rehearsal may be the first one that makes sense coming out of a tiny phone speaker.

Write down which version of the song you learnt. If you changed a line, keep a note of the line you started with. A title on its own might send somebody to a different recording and leave them wondering where your verse came from. There is real value in knowing who supplied the extra words, who taught you the melody and what the person standing next to you did when you first played it through. If you share a recording publicly, check what permission and credits it needs. The work you do on an arrangement can sit quite comfortably beside an honest account of where you got the song.

For this weekend’s listening, take one track from each record before you get lost in the listings. Follow ‘Willow Garden’ from the session to the album and listen to the moment a verse gives way to the next. Then put the new ‘Fairytale of New York’ beside the familiar recording and pick one exchange where the two singers have to reckon with each other. If you come away wanting to sing either song, try it once without the record playing. You might find you have a different idea about when to come in.