Issue #51: 'Need You Now' & the New Pop Country Crossover Canon

Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control, so...

Coachella had a lot of surprises this year – Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey singing together, Reneé Rapp and Kesha, something about Grimes forgetting to bring her flash drive maybe? – but nothing caught my attention more than Sky Ferreira covering Lady A’s 2009 hit “Need You Now.” The internet was shocked, but I was more pleasantly surprised than anything: it’s actually not shocking at all that this song remains in the consciousness of today’s working artists. It’s actually shocking we don’t see it covered more. Because that shit was a hit.

Ferreira’s interpretation takes the trio’s massive crossover single and brings it to haunting, synthpop territory. But what’s great about her version is how she lets the chorus stay as anthemic as it ever was: a universal subject (drunk dialing), delivered in the universal tongue (pop-country). For all the talk of the genre’s current crossover moment, this song was massive: it won four Grammy awards, climbed to number 2 on the Billboard charts and became an international hit, going top-ten in places like Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway. It’s the most downloaded song in country music history. That was 2009.

There’s so much ahistorical dialogue around the current “moment” country music is having - and one of them is pretending (or being ignorant to) the fact that songs like “Need You Now” existed (or any number of times country music crossed over into the pop zeitgeist). Written by Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood along with Josh Kear, it was the song of the year that you listened to if you “didn’t listen to country music,” before Taylor went Red.

The band’s disappointing and frustrating recent past aside, “Need You Now” is definitely one of those classics-in-training ready for its resurgence. Apparently the band wrote it in around an hour, frustrated after trying to make the song they thought should be a hit work. Purists said it wasn’t country enough, of course, but it did what country music is supposed to do: connect emotionally.

There aren’t loads and loads of great covers out there - YouTube star Sam Tsui, Adele for sure, and you can definitely draw some parallels between the type of music Adele makes and tracks like this one! - though I am pretty partial to this one by AHMIR, from over twelve years ago. They, too, kill it on that chorus:

It’s also amazing to see it pop up in places like the Voice of Romania and Jakarta. Truly a global sensation in its time - but definitely short of being consistently in the cultural dialogue since then, at least at the level you’d imagine.

Did I think Sky Ferreira would be the one to bring it back? Well, no, but like I said, it makes sense if you consider history (and the fact that its a bop). But I’m happy its here.

Now who’s gonna cover it next?

- Marissa