Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) is a big fan of the cover song. She performs them a lot, and her 2008 album Jukebox is made up almost entirely of songs by other artists, including James Brown, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and others. She recently announced her upcoming record Wanderer, and while it’s a traditional album, it turns out that there’s a cover in the tracklist that’s been staring right at us this whole time. The sixth track is titled “Stay,” and now we know that it is in fact the Rihanna song, as Marshall just shared her rendition of the song from the album.
“I love the tradition of covering songs,” Marshall said. “I think it’s one of the highest compliments you can pay another artist. It’s one of the great traditions in American music and one of the true pleasures of music history.”
This isn’t Marshall’s first time covering the song, as she’s previously performed it at a couple shows in 2017, once in Belgium and another time in Argentina. The song is already a slow piano ballad in its original form, but Marshall manages to mellow the song out even further, as she approaches her vocals in a more subdued style than those of Rihanna.
Watch Cat Power’s intimate cover of Rihanna’s “Stay” above, and revisit Rihanna’s original version below.
Wanderer is out 10/5 via Domino. Pre-order it here.
