The British rock foursome, The Struts, have released a cover of The Martha & the Vandellas original, “Dancing In The Street”.
And make no mistake – it’s WAY more Van Halen than Vandellas. Listening to their cover, it almost makes you think that the only version of the song they were inspired to cover was Van Halen’s take on the song.
We think of the Van Halen version as something that could have been a Van Halen original. Eddie wrote an amazing piece of music on a Minimoog synthesizer and shared it with David Lee Roth and producer Ted Templeman. But instead of crafting a really unique Van Halen song out of it, Ted and Dave wanted to take the easy way out, and basically hijacked Eddie’s synth composition and simply turned it into a cover of “Dancing in the Streets,” by doing not much more than having David and Michael sing The Martha & the Vandellas lyrics over it.
“We are thrilled to debut our rendition of the Martha and the Vandellas classic ‘Dancing In The Street’, which has been interpreted by quite a few legendary artists over the years – now it’s our turn. Our take on the song was about bringing in the best elements of all the versions that already exist,” The Struts said in a media release.
Huh? To us, this doesn’t sound like a straight cover of the original, nor does it sound inspired by the Mick Jagger-David Bowie version, but rather, a pretty straightforward cover of the Van Halen version. Not that we’re complaining!
Below, watch The Struts’ fun, official video for the song. We also threw in the original version (1965), Van Halen’s version (1982), and the Mick Jagger-David Bowie version (1985).
What do you think? If The Struts version a straight-ahead cover of Van Halen’s cover? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
The Struts (Official Video):
Van Halen (official audio)
David Bowie & Mick Jagger (Official Video)
Martha & The Vandellas