#5: New York, New York — Cat Power
Kander and Ebb wrote this song for Martin Scorsese’s 1977 film, where Liza Minnelli introduced it. Sinatra’s version followed and became so definitive that it has been played at Yankee Stadium after every game since 1980. Chan Marshall recorded a version that removed all of that triumph entirely, replacing it with something closer to isolation, a slow, minimal reading that treated the city as a place of exhaustion rather than ambition. It is the cover that most directly challenges what the song is allowed to mean.
