Specifically, First Aid Kit's cover of Simon and Garfunkel's version.
And leaving aside the irony of the fact that one of the standards of popular American folk rock was done better by a pair of Swedes, there's plenty to unpack.
Here's the original:
Here's the First Aid Kit version:
Comparing the cover to the original--which has been nearly universally acclaimed--spares the normal discussion about the content of the song, which is about a road trip across the U.S. in which Simon, because he wrote the song in the 1960s, is trying to make a grand statement about the American Condition.
First Aid Kit's version differs largely in two ways: vocal arrangement and dynamics, and I'd argue that it's superior in both.
The first is less important, and subjective. Simon and Garfunkel sing in unison for most of the song, and it gives a haunting effect I came to love while I was listening to the doubled vocal tracks that characterize Elliott Smith. It's fine. But if you've got two people singing--particularly if one of them isn't playing an instrument--my personal philosophy is that you ought to make the most out of it. Trade off lines or verses for textural contrast, or have harmony throughout. The Soderberg sisters have built a signature sound on doing just that, so I find their drive from Canada to New York more interesting than Simon and Garfunkel's. That's a personal preference to be sure, but it does offer them an outlet Simon and Garfunkel denied themselves: unison for effect.
Unison for lack of a better idea is boring. Unison in contrast to alternating leads and/or harmony is like taking a whiff of smelling salts, and First Aid Kit breaks it out for the most important line in the song.
Which brings up the most important difference between the two versions: When we get the big crescendo in the fourth verse.
The single greatest weapon in a songwriter/composer's arsenal is the crescendo. The final crescendo is the climax, the way of highlighting that this is what the whole song's about. It's Act 5, Scene 1. It's what moves you.
So let's talk about where the crescendo comes in, and what that represents.
For Simon and Garfunkel, it comes in midway through the fourth verse, on "Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike" and climaxing on "They've all come to look for America," which is the memorable melodic and lyrical element to the song. Anyone who knows anything about Simon and Garfunkel would be able to sing that line for you.
First Aid Kit brings in the crescendo with the strings leading up the fourth verse, then climaxes at the start of the verse: " 'Kathy, I'm lost,' I said / Though I knew she was sleeping. / 'I'm empty and aching and I don't know why.' " We'd been through the verse three times before that, and each time it had been lilting and beautiful and, frankly, optimistic. But once Kathy's asleep--once we're in a place where there's nobody to look strong for--the motif turns urgent and pained and desperate.
Simon and Garfunkel's version emphasizes that Paul and Kathy have driven across the country and haven't found America, whatever that is, and neither has anyone else on the road--hence "They've all come to look for America." It's chasing an ideal that isn't there anymore, and they don't know how to continue.
First Aid Kit's version emphasizes that Paul's in deep, personal, existential pain. He can't pinpoint the source of it, and he doesn't feel comfortable talking about it, even to the person he supposedly loves and trusts the most, and even though it's destroying him. The trip across the country isn't about looking for an American ideal, it's about looking for something worth saving in himself and his relationship, and not being able to find that is an entirely different question.
The difference between the two speaks volumes. Paul Simon was born in the 1940s and wrote the song in the 1960s. It's Boomer Music, so the central problem is with how other people view something national and abstract. There's an ironic detachment to the lyrics, and for a song called "America," it says absolutely fuck-all about the country or the culture.
The Soderbergs--both born in the 1990s--take up the same text and see that the central problem is that the narrator has a vague sense that he's not whole, that he's not feeling something he was supposed to, that he was promised. That absence, though entirely emotional, is causing him deep, possibly fatal pain, and he's been conditioned not to mention it to anyone. That's a powerful, relatable internal conflict, and not mere impotent, vague, bullshit Boomer hand-waving.
Moving the crescendo up makes it a far more interesting story, and it says a hell of a lot more about America than the original.
