On her 2016 album Words Don’t Bleed, Houston-based singer-songwriter Cameron Dezen Hammon chose to record cover versions of songs by male artists and inhabit them from a female perspective. With the exception of one song, every other track on the album was originally released in the ’80s.
She tackles Top 40 fare by Don Henley, George Michael and Bruce Springsteen, as well as post-punk/new-wave material by The Cure, Morrissey and New Order.
While none of Hammon’s versions are straight-ahead covers of the original songs, some follow the originals closer than others, and Hammon even deviates wildly from certain originals, changing chord structure and rearranging lyrical passages.
Hammon, along with cellist Aimee Norris and guitarist Jimmy Cardoza, recently visited Houston Public Media’s Geary Performance Studio to record an edition of Skyline Sessions.
In the videos below, Hammon talks about how she adapted Robert Palmer’s iconic 1986 hit Addicted to Love. We hear her take on The Cure’s haunting 1985 song A Night Like This. And she performs her original song, Mixtape.