Sweet Old World

Original - Lucinda Williams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWJCu3d6EX0

Cover - Emmylou Harris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5myH02EYHfE

this was the hardest time in recent memory that I've had in picking which song I liked better. Both are really really good and although I'm more of a fan of Lucinda's than Emmylou's, I gave a very slight nod to her version.

Original - Lucinda Williams

Emmylou for me.

I'm going with the original. In a close fight, it was ultimately a preference for Lucinda's vocals. You lost some of the lyrics with Harris's breathier vocals

Emmylou Harris, please.

I gotta go with Emmylou's version. She really gave feeling to the sense of loss people feel when somebody close to them gives up and takes their lives.

Very hard for me as well.

The first time I heard this song, it was Lucinda's version and when I realized what I was listening to, I was struck by the thought that it HAD to be the first time I'd ever heard a song that could be about suicide and was so...up-tempo. And because I'd known someone who ended her own life while in her teens, I thought of her.

When I eventually would hear Emmylou's version, a whole other layer -- and a thick one, at that -- was added to the experience and the only person I could think of was someone I'd never met.

I also thought that Emmylou had taken the song to another level, turning up a notch the heartbreaking capability of it. But did she? Or was that the way it seemed to me because of what I happened to know of her relationship with Gram Parsons --- and it affected my listening experience? That, I guess I'll never know.

That said, with all due respect to the brilliance of Lucinda Williams ...

The Cover -- Emmylou Harris, please.

I like both versions of this song, but think my favorite is the original by Lucinda Williams.