Beech Tree News Network

Remakes are tricky.  “With a Little Help From My Friends” was a Beatles original.  It appeared on their 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band .  It was remade two years later by the late Joe Cocker. It was certified gold in the U.S. and peaked at #35 on the Billboard 200.  The song is most known, at least of my generation, for Joe’s version being the Wonder Years theme song.  Fans of the show would hear that song once every week for six seasons.  As of 2010, it was the 7th most popular Beatles song in a Beatles Top 50 poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly. 
Yesterday, I heard an interesting cover of “The Sound of Silence”.  Originally titled “The Sounds of Silence”, the song was written by Paul Simon over a period of several months between 1963 and 1964.  The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending January 1, 1966.  The cover I heard? In 2015, heavy metal band Disturbed covered the song.  It became very popular.  Paul Simon endorsed the cover as a result.  Throughout the month of January 1966, the song battled the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out” for the #1 spot on Billboard Hot 100.  In 1999, BMI named the song the 18th most performed song of the 20th century.
When director Mike Nichols and Sam  O’Steen were editing the 1967 film The Graduate, they initially timed some scenes to this song intending to substitute original music for the scenes. However, they eventually concluded that the song could not be adequately substituted and decided to purchase the rights for the song for the soundtrack. This was an unusual decision for the time, as the song had charted over a year earlier and recycling established music for film was not commonly done.[33] With the practice of using well-known songs for films becoming commonplace, "The Sound of Silence" has since been used for other films, such as Kingpin (1996), Old School (2003), Bobby (2006) and Watchmen (2009). In the German TV movie Ein Drilling Kommt Selten Allein the song was sung by grandparents to calm down crying triplets. It appeared on the fourth season of the television series Arrested Development in 2013 as a running gag of characters' inner reflections.
In the Rush song "The Spirit of the Radio”, the final lines are a satirical homage to the final lines of "The Sound of Silence": "For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall". In the liner notes, the lyrics spell the word 'profits' and not 'prophets'. This ironic twist is consistent with the song's theme of criticizing how money has damaged the integrity of the music industry, particularly in radio. 
This topic might arise again if I feel strongly about how good or bad another remake may be.  Ironically, that would mean that this column might require a remake!