This week the column topic is… the heat again.

Sorry, kidding, sorry. Just a little game I play with our illustrious editor Roman Gokhman where I see how much I can annoy him before he murders me literally to death.

This week we return to the time-honored tradition of picking a topic based on the song I happened to be listening to at the time. And like that column I just linked in the previous sentence, the song I was listening to was a cover.

But, oh! Not just any cover. The song I was listening to was a cover by the band that did the original song. [Gokhman note: He’s talking about a remix]. It’s not extremely common but it’s common enough that I was able to find five, and that doesn’t even count the Foo Fighters’ acoustic version of “Everlong” or Eric Clapton’s unplugged version of “Layla” that I used in the column I linked in the previous paragraph.

It also doesn’t include the version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” from Gord’s Gold, even though it’s one of my favorite songs, mostly because I’ve used it multiple times already.

The Offspring — “Dirty Magic”

This song originally appeared on the Offspring’s second album, Ignition, in 1992. They took another stab at it on 2012’s Days Go By and… honestly, I like it a lot better. That feels like sacrilege because the original is one of my favorite songs from its album and the new one was done after 20 years of the band getting older and less punk, but it’s true.

If I had to make a guess why it’s better in the 21st century, it’s probably that the Young Offspring just weren’t at a place in their careers where they could turn the intensity down. It can be remarkably hard for punk and metal bands to take it down a notch, as evidenced by the ’80s tragic history of cringe-inducing power ballads, so they needed the time to develop.

Or maybe they just had 20 years of practice and became better musicians. One or the other.

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Dirty Vegas — “Days Go By (Acoustic)”

This is officially a theme; the first one was “Dirty Magic” off the album Days Go By and this one is “Days Go By” by a band called Dirty Vegas. Synergy!

Anyway, the original “Days Go By” is an underrated gem from 2002. I talk about all that in the last entry of my corrections column. But the last track on the same album is this acoustic version of what was originally an electronic song, and I love it.

I mean, I love both, but since the electronic one was the single and in the band’s actual normal genre, then this is the cover [Gokhman note: Again, remix], and thus it fits the theme of the column.

Metallica — “Blackened 2020”

Musicians love to do acoustic versions of their own songs. I suspect it’s due to “MTV Unplugged,” since very few of them predate the show. They probably listen to Nirvana Unplugged and go, “You know what, I can do that!”

They usually can’t do that.

Then you have Metallica, who—and understand: I’m biased because they’re by far my favorite band—can do basically anything it wants. It’s been around so long and embarrassed itself so many times that people forget how absurdly talented it is. It can cover basically anything well, including itself.

While most bands’ acoustic renditions of their songs fall flat, Metallica does it during a pandemic, without being in the same place, because they members are bored. And they crush it.

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Del Shannon — “Runaway ’67”

In 1961, Del Shannon released “Runaway,” one of the best songs of its era. It’s great in large part because of the Musitron, an early version of a synth that gives the song a vaguely retro sci-fi quality juxtaposing its subject matter.

Then a whopping six years later he released a new version.

By this point, the Beatles had released Revolver and psychedelia was becoming a thing, so he replaced the Musitron with what sounds like a full-blown orchestra and slowed it down by about a third. And, amazingly, it still works. It didn’t reach legendary status like its predecessor but it really shows Shannon’s range.

Then in 1987 he made another version as the theme song of a TV show called “Crime Story.” It’s less novel. And less good.

Gordon Lightfoot — “Steel Rail Blues”

Yes, I said I wouldn’t put the Gord’s Gold version of “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” on here. But, surprise! There are two re-recordings of songs about trains on Gord’s Gold! Loophole!

In the ’60s, Gordon Lightfoot was signed to United Artists and released a bunch of albums. They were pretty great. Then he switched to Reprise Records in the ’70s. His style switched pretty significantly. Most notably, he brought the vocals down in pitch and stopped singing so nasally. It’s what he sounds like on “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” so it’s probably how you envision him sounding.

So when he was going to release a greatest hits album in 1975, he decided that the first record, featuring his UA songs, would be rerecorded to match the style of his current stuff. Reportedly, he just didn’t like listening to his old stuff. And the Gord’s Gold versions have become the canonical ones in a lot of cases.

Just listen to the song above, then listen to the original. Much better, right? I think we can agree it’s much better.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.