My song "Icarus" was altered substantially in tone and meaning once Nic Jones changed the pronouns around. I hadn't intended it necessarily to be about a woman watching a man do something daring - just someone watching someone else. But the song has survived and travelled - possibly further than it would have done if I'd stuck to my poetic guns and told him he mustn't alter a syllable. So it's not just about love songs.

I'm sure "Raglan Road" will survive whatever anyone does to it, but if you personally don't like a version there's no law that says you have to listen to it again ... is there?

On the other hand I do get pretty hot under the collar when someone alters my songs to take away the internal rhymes and the syllable count (and yes, they have done and no, I'm not naming names). That's a whole different kind of re-writing.

Anne