I Dreamed (Listened To) A Dream (31 Covers Of I Dreamed A Dream) In Time Gone By (And Rated Them By How Sad They Made Me)
I Dreamed A Dream, from the stage musical adaptation of Les Miserables (making it clear to you right now that I’m gonna be very inconsistent about when and where I bother with the accented letters in the title, get on or get off now.), is my favourite musical number- and one of my favourite songs in general- of all time. Sung by the character of Fantine, an impoverished woman during the time of the French Revolution trying to find the money to support her daughter Cosette, dragging her to deeper, ever-darker depths of Paris as she tries and fails to make them a better life. I don’t know much about musical theatre (Our Year 6 end-of-year production was a series of sketches we were allowed to write about the 2010 world cup, I can’t remember what mine was but I remember having Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy in it, twice) but I would feel safe saying that Fantine is one of the most tragic characters of the modern stage, certainly the most tragic I’ve ever seen, perhaps only eclipsed by that kid called Fingers or Digits or something who gets accidentally one-tapped by a splurge gun in Bugsy Malone and informed my childhood understanding of death, in that it taught me I was not too young to just die in a freak custard gun malfunction.
I Dreamed A Dream is a song that, in most adaptations, is sung by Fantine as she is forced to labour harder and harder for pennies for her little girl, made to give up more and more of herself emotionally and literally- selling her hair, her teeth and her body. She reminisces about her life, her hopes, her dreams and Cosette’s Father, who Fantine thought would be by her side forever but left her just as quickly as he found her. As Fantine goes deeper into her struggle, all the while succumbing to an illness that- after this song- kills her, I Dreamed A Dream comes to its climax, the music swells, and Fantine sings,
“I dreamed a dream my life would be,
So different from this hell I’m living,
So different now from what it seemed,
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”
Which I have always, since I first heard it in my Grandmother’s living room on her CD player from one of many CDs of Les Miserables she owned and loved, found among some of the most moving lyrics I have ever heard, and they continue to move me now, twenty years later. It is an evergreen sadness, a timeless heartbreak as present now as ever. The struggle to survive, the inability to shrug off the constant, staggering blows life deals you, the belief that you deserve to live happily and comfortably stomped out routinely by the realities of labour, government and social oppression, the dream you perhaps dreamed your life would be that is so very, very different from this hell you’re living. Haunting. Bleak. Bitter. Covered at least 31 times in different styles and genres to varying degrees of melancholy, melancholy that I will now judge by how well a singer hits those last few lyrics.
Anyway, here’s Neil Diamond’s version.
All covers of I Dreamed A Dream featured in this article can be found in this YouTube playlist.
1
I Dreamed A Dream (Live) - Neil Diamond
(The Bit We Care About: 3:40)
Right, immediately loses points for doing that thing where male singers swap the gender of the pronouns of a romantic subject in a song so nobody thinks they’re gay, which is a mark of deep spiritual cowardice. It also fundamentally changes the flavour of sadness in a song like I Dreamed A Dream. A man in 1985 telling us a brief fling isn’t calling him back? Your last name is Diamond and Mad Max 3 just came out- there is still beauty abound in your life.
More importantly, he really doesn’t hit that last verse here. Diamond’s cover as a whole is kind of up-tempo and glossy, and he hilariously kind of breezes through his delivery of ‘so different from this hell I’m living’, so nonchalantly that you can actually hear the smile on his face. This is a man who holds the world record for most pinball machine flips without tilting the machine and is still ten years away from his second wife divorcing him. I don’t blame him. It’s like if Fantine had a cousin whose life rocked.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 2/10
Emotional Equivalent: Getting told that plans you weren’t super excited for involving a £22 train fare have been cancelled, and you’re trying to console an upset friend who was actually very excited, but all you can think about is how because you mentally already spent that £22 a couple days ago, this news means you are, of course, £22 richer.
2
I Dreamed A Dream - Patti LuPone
(The Bit We Care About: 3:33)
Next up, the version that will serve as our baseline, straight from the mouth of the original Fantine of Les Miserables’ theatre run, Patti LuPone. It’s lush, it’s heart-rending, it’s sung in an accent that really keeps you on your toes- and is simply and undeniably beautiful. The last verse is delivered with such strength, such false strength that wavers and falters ever so as Fantine fades away in volume and in spirit.
It’s I Dreamed A Dream as God intended (translated out of the prison that is the French language).
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 10/10
Emotional Equivalent: Recreating that Anthony Bourdain sandwich-and-little-sunglasses photo in Paris, then having to actually eat an entire, dry baguette with just a slice of ham in the middle. It cost €11. You must finish it. People are watching. You must finish it.
3
I Dreamed A Dream (feat. Dennis Haysbert & Tom Ellis) - Lucifer Cast
(The Bit We Care About: 2:13)
I don’t know anything about the TV Show Lucifer, where Lucifer roams modern day earth running nightclubs and helping the LAPD solve murders, other than it sounds like a made-up show a moron in a sitcom would love in an episode subplot. I also, more pressingly, have no idea why the fuck it has an official cast cover of I Dreamed A Dream out on streaming services. Did they do all of Les Miserables for a charity album or something? They really give no weight at all to most of the song, and definitely give nothing to the last verse at all, so I gotta imagine they were doing this for fun in the name of a good cause. Actually, I’m gonna go look at what else is on it, one sec.
Hahaha hell yeah brother.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 3/10
Emotional Equivalent: Imagining Joey from Friends starring in Lucifer and having a subplot where shooting went over and he had to rush to his Niece’s christening in the red makeup and horns. But the main plot of the episode is about something serious though, like Ross getting mad about no fault-divorce or Bush or some shit.
4
I Dreamed A Dream - Lucy Thomas
(The Bit We Care About: 2:10)
I’m gonna level with you, a lot of these aren’t as funny in concept as Neil Diamond’s gender-swapped cover, or the Lucifer cast cover, a lot of these are just incredibly earnest covers of I Dreamed A Dream but 10 isn’t a funny number and I do actually love this song, so I’m going for the non-ridiculous ones too. Just a heads up. I will get to Susan Boyle’s cover in this and I’m not even gonna be that funny about it. Just letting you know.
Anyway, yeah this one is fine, but a little aloof. Emotionally just not quite there, a slight but off putting distance between lyrics and delivery, like if a kid at school who thinks musicals are lame but has a god-given voice was forced to choose between a month of detention or playing Fantine, like an adolescent version of getting arrested in 1941 for not smoking indoors and being forced to pick between the pit or the army.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 5/10
Emotional Equivalent: Moth on your face. You do not have a particular phobia of moths. There is still a moth on your face.
5
I Dreamed A Dream (Original Broadway Cast/1987) - Randy Graff
(The Bit We Care About: 3:22)
This is an album that, admittedly, immediately put my back up because it has one of those vague clip-art-with-seven-fonts-of-text covers you only see on sale in petrol stations or at those fairs your primary school did where you were marched into the sports hall to buy one of five options of Mother’s day gift for a pound.
The key I’m noticing here is that the worse the cover, the better the song- the polar opposite case as is with books- because Randy Graff’s version of I Dreamed A Dream is staggering. Graff sings with a breathlessness and a panic in her voice that is just so exhausted and frightened. Reminds me of this thing I would do in the shower as a teenager where I would try and sing whatever song I had on while the water was blasting me directly in the face to see if I could develop a tolerance for waterboarding, something I thought would be a far bigger threat in my life than it ever ended up being.
But yeah, no, great version of the song. Graff almost chokes on the word ‘Hell’ in that last verse, and it genuinely makes my chest tighten a little every time. Perhaps the greatest artistic achievement by someone named Randy, for my money.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 10/10
Emotional Equivalent: Watching your friends and loved ones laugh merrily at you when they found out during a slightly manic period of time where you decided you would download and print off Wikipedia articles that would prove valuable if society collapsed but you only saved ‘Money’, ‘Electricity’ and ‘Bread’ before stopping. Excuse you for trying to preserve their way of life for them.
6
I Dreamed A Dream (feat. Matthew Freeman) - Claire Moore
(The Bit We Care About: 2:43)
Kind of a weird air about this one, a little too glossy and ballroom-y, if you get me. It’s like if Arrested Development did a musical episode (they might have, I don’t know, I was gravely warned about watching too much of that show, like a man I made small talk with in an airport getting up and walking away after passing me a note that says ‘don’t be a hero’) and this is Lucille Bluth’s number.
It almost feels a little parodic, and slightly shrill, which I really don’t intend to be a dunk on Claire Moore because that is a tone of voice that really works in some numbers, but she makes that last verse sound like Total Eclipse Of The Heart. She made her Hell sound like somewhere I wanna smoke on the balcony of and daydream fondly of my wife (not a dead one.)
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 4/10
Emotional Equivalent: Getting broken up with after you already bought their Christmas gifts, but they were versatile enough that you’ve just realised you can knock your Mum and Grandma off the to do list through strategic regifting. A December 15th tragedy- but a Christmas Day miracle.
7
I Dreamed A Dream (From “Les Miserables”) - Collabro
(The Bit We Care About: 2:47)
I promise that’s just the title of this particular cover, not a mid-article reminder from me.
For a long time I had a working theory that I Dreamed A Dream works best when sung by a woman, and as if trying to prove me wrong here comes Collabro with not just one male voice but… uh, at least like three, I think.
Aside from the recurring, divine cowardice of pronoun-flipping, this cover is satisfyingly moving, lush and conveys a lot of anguish and longing, but almost in an old, working song way. It’s less a plea from Fantine as she asks God why she must suffer so, and more of a bittersweet, lets-get-on-with-it sailor’s song asking God why they have so little Vitamin C available aboard.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 7/10
Emotional Equivalent: You passed on the two chicken and mushroom pies in the Sainsbury’s reduced section yesterday for 90p each, assuming the luck would hold until tomorrow. There are only two bags of pre-shredded lettuce there today. Such hubris.
8
J’avais rêvé - Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schönberg
(The Bit We Care About: 3:21)
Uh… Hmm… probably alright!
L'enfer qu'ils vivent Rating: 6/10
Emotional Equivalent: Deciding for the sake of a bit to not actually review this version, in its original language, when it is in fact very affecting and surprisingly bridged a gap you never considered between Fantine the human as written by Victor Hugo, and Fantine the character Neil Diamond changed into a guy for a throwaway performance in a live show to make the Mums happy.
9
I Dreamed A Dream - Mark Zauss
(The Bit We Care About: 4:10)
A unique cover on this list that uses an instrument in place of a voice, Mark Zauss instead performs the vocal melody on what I assume is his rainbow-shooting trumpet, if his album cover art is to be trusted.
It's an incredibly funny bit to turn this song into something that sounds like the theme song to a soap opera about a speakeasy, honestly. Not even remotely somber or anguished, this is just a bop that makes me want to mug at the camera for a few seconds with my name superimposed beneath me. The soap opera is called ‘Lovelost Heights’, by the way. Nobody smokes in it. We average four pregnancies a year. Two spinoffs. Both failed.
The Hell They’ve Living Rating: A townhouse in heaven.
Emotional Equivalent: You should be playing this at your wedding.
10
I Dreamed A Dream (From “Les Mis’erables”) - Aretha Franklin
(The Bit We Care About: 3:05)
I had no idea Aretha Franklin had done a cover of this, and I don’t really know what I was expecting but it wasn’t synths, drum machines and the changing of most lines. I fuck with the changing of ‘I had a dream my life would be so different from his hell I’m living’ to ‘I had a dream (had a dream), listen, oh, I had a dream, life would be so different (so different), what in the hell is goin’ on today! (yeah!)’
Because you know what, Aretha? What in the hell is going on today?
What In The Hell Is Going On Today (Yeah!) Rating: 10/10
Emotional Equivalent: Checking up on a YouTuber you loved as a kid out of curiosity and seeing their last video, posted 17 months ago, titled ‘My Response.’
11
I Dreamed A Dream - Ruthie Henshall
(The Bit We Care About: 2:32)
I really enjoyed compiling 31 of these covers, some I was aware of and some at complete random, and discovering artists with like 600 monthly listeners who sound like background characters with three appearances in The Simpsons. This one is from The Ruthie Henshall Album. The good Mrs. Henshall heard about the concept of self-titling your album and after blinking at her agent for a while, politely but firmly told them that she was making an album of music, not a second Ruthie Henshall, and asked if they’d taken a blow to the head recently. That’s the kind of thinking that cements you as a household name.
This one is interesting because it keeps switching up, it's very flippant in mood and tone. Sometimes it's sombre and slow and heart-rending, sometimes it flirts with ambitions of becoming the new Lovelost Heights theme song. But by God, brother, is the rage and sadness there. Your backing instrumentals are allowed to sound like telephone hold music for an office that still has a fax machine if your vocals sound like you’ve been put on a stretching rack. That’s called juxtaposition and academic crowds such as our reader base like it, and not just because it offers the sweet abandon of writing a word that looks like it's spelt wrong while in fact being correct. Sometimes you just gotta live a little. Smoke that cigarette. Drink that shot. Write that dumb-looking word that is actually for smart people.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 9/10
Emotional Equivalent: Never once spelling ‘Equivalent’ right on the first go, accepting that Google Docs’ auto-spelling detection is all that gives you legitimacy as a writer. Not even spelling ‘Legitimacy’ right first go, either. God help you.
12
Dreamed a dream - Car, The Garden
(The Bit We Care About: ???)
Took me like a minute and a half to realise this wasn’t an upbeat, Korean cover of the song and that I may have been a little trigger happy when I was putting this playlist together on Youtube Music (workplace redundancy makes urchins of the proudest men).
Hey, look, it’s a lovely sounding song, I suppose. I have definitely heard far, far worse. Hell, I have heard far, far worse in my reviewing of actual covers of I Dreamed A Dream.
The Hell They’ve Living Rating: Not my jurisdiction.
Emotional Equivalent: The surprising joy of realising you don’t have to actually write about another cover of I Dreamed A Dream and get to do a throwaway entry that takes you about 2 minutes. Considering doing another but this time on purpose. Wondering if anyone would call you out on it if you did.
13
I Dreamed A Dream - Ute Lemper
(The Bit We Care About: 3:52)
Hey, look, when I was a child my parents told me that if I had nothing nice to say I shouldn’t say anything at all.
Haha nah just playing, no they didn’t.
Incredibly funny cover that misses the point of the song at every possible turn. Glossy, bouncy, magical and extremely late-80s in an almost parodic way. Pretty rough throughout but Temper amusingly just sprints over seemingly random parts of lines like they only had the studio for an hour, got her album recorded and did this one as a throwaway at the end to maximise value but the technician misjudged how long the backing track was.
I’ve been looping these songs over and over while I write about each one and I think I’m on like the fifth go around of this and it’s barely registering as a song to me. It’s almost registering as three songs playing at the same time, maybe, but definitely not as one cohesive cover of I Dreamed A Dream. She is somehow having to play catch-up with the instrumental of an emotional broadway musical number like a guy trying to rap along to the hip-hop song he begged to show you, while you slowly realise he’s only heard it maybe two times tops a couple of days ago.
It’s not even comically bad or anything, it’s just confused and muddled and inconsistent and reminds me of when I was 19 and woke up at about 4am to find the ASMR I was listening to so I could drift off had, after it ended, autoplayed a hands-free orgasm hypnosis tutorial and I regained consciousness in the thick of the several multi-pitched, multi-layered, slowed-and-sped-up audio tracks of a lady shout-whispering ‘NOW’ at me.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 1/10
Emotional Equivalent: Putting that last joke in an article during a period of jobseeking where your ‘content writing’ experience is easily findable just by Googling your name. Kind of rough and only barely funny enough to be worth it. Please hire me. I do more than this. Read the Oppenheimer article I wrote on this site. I am a very personable and efficient worker. Available to start immediately.
14
I DREAMED A DREAM - May J.
(The Bit We Care About: 2:20)
M-Ma’am- Ma’am- please do not shout at me, thank you.
Not a whole lot here, I’ll be honest. Perfectly serviceable but there’s a lot of piano going on here (the coward’s instrument) that makes this whole thing very shiny and bright. If you showed me this and told me it was from the soundtrack of like Kingdom Hearts or something I would smile and nod as politely yet uninterestedly as I would like to be doing now for this cover.
May J. has a solid voice but there is just very little emotion going on here. This cover makes me realise that as common a complaint as it has been, I much prefer an artist to miss the point and make this song sound happy/triumphant/sexy instead of just making it sound like nothing.
Even that last verse, which until now I thought an artist had to make a concerted effort to not even accidentally put some small emotion into, just sort of melts into the goo that becomes of any number as Ariana Grande-ified as this one, unfortunately, is.
I historically enjoy eating the odd slice of plain white bread folded in half if I’m hungry and have nothing in. I am not sure what I could actually make funny about that slice of bread, however.
The Hell They’ve Living Rating: 2/10
Emotional Equivalent: The 5p coin you had in your pocket fell out at some point in the day. You think of all the things you could have bought with it before laughing.
15
I Dreamed a Dream - Angie Gold
(The Bit We Care About: 4:37)
Alright, time for a gag one! A Eurodance version of I Dreamed A Dream?! Sure thing Angie Gold! Always nice to come across one I don’t have to take seriou-
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 7/10
Emotional Equivalent: Being haunted by the memory of the time you found a wallet left on top of a toilet roll dispenser in a student nightclub, took the tenner you found inside it, and left the wallet there. Being even more haunted by the fact that it only bought you one double vodka and lemonade. I mean it probably could have done you two single vodka lemonades but why waste the glass, you know? The wallet had many bank cards and a photograph of a relative in it. The photo looked old. Probably no copies. The lady in it was smiling so wide.
16
I Dreamed a Dream (From “Les Miserables”) - Rosanna Pansino
(The Bit We Care About: 2:01)
This one auto played in the playlist of these covers I’ve been using for this article, and I genuinely did not realise this was even playing until the version following this began afterwards. I skipped back and gave it a proper listen and realised that I, once again, immediately lost all knowledge a song was playing. I feel that just about covers what this one’s all about.
God bless Rosanna Pansino for trying to get stuck into that last verse, because she really does try, but she just has such a Disney princess inflection to her singing voice- where her voice is a little overly emotional and elocuted but in an almost pantomime, teacher-really-getting-into-reading-a-children's-book-out-loud kind of way. Go listen to an audiobook reading of The Gruffalo and you’re gonna get a comparable experience.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 2/10
Emotional Equivalent: That one behind-the-scenes video of Jaoquin Phoenix in the studio recording his lines for Brother Bear, and for every single second he doesn’t need to be acting into the microphone in the center of the booth he just wanders into a corner and hangs his head to the floor with his eyes closed.
17
I Dreamed A Dream - Susan Boyle
(The Bit We Care About: 2:09)
Here we are, da big one. I considered closing the piece on this one because I’m very aware that if you are in the United Kingdom and were not bullied into the theatre at school, this is probably where your mind immediately goes when you hear I Dreamed A Dream discussed, but I’ve decided that this entry will instead serve as a mid-article checkpoint for anyone who actually decided to read this and didn’t just like the instagram post for it because I pimped out Mark Strauss’ rainbow-shooting trumpet for circa-2014 comedy value to get eyeballs on it.
I suppose, then, it’s hard for me to talk about this particular version of the song without considering Susan Boyle as a public figure, the middle-aged lady who became a household name on being considered frumpy and unattractive by the press but also actually being pretty undeniably great at something. Which, of course, is rarely ever the case.
It must be a somewhat hard kind of fame to have (if such a kind even exists), knowing that your talent was elevated in the face of a few million people watching you on Britain’s Got Talent and giggling as to why a woman in her late 40s has dared to appear on their televisions without being hot for the 30 seconds preceding your music kicking in and then clearing out your section of HMV every Christmas and Grandmother’s Birthday for the next three years.
There’s something triumphant about it. There’s something painful about it. There’s something French about it. Probably.
Look, you know this version, you’ve heard this version, you know what’s going on here. Susan Boyle is a true talent and on this song that has become something of a calling card for her she delivers an exhausted, overwhelmed performance of the whole song and final verse- one that almost, almost, feels joyous. Sun just can’t break through the clouds, etc.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 9/10
Emotional Equivalent: Your name alone becoming a versatile and serviceable punchline that children across the entirety of the UK, and Harry Hill, could bust out at any time between 2009 and 2011, knowing it was a guaranteed laugh.
Intermission.
Intermission over.
18
I Dreamed A Dream - Martine McCutcheon
(The Bit We Care About: 2:37)
She’s wearing a sequined top hat in the album cover and over-delivers on the high notes like the most annoying person you knew at school going full send whenever they sang Happy Birthday, if anyone knows how to get stuck into a musical theatre number it’s gotta be Martine McCutcheon right here.
For most of this version I was not fucking with it at all, it’s too slight and bright and just kind of alright (‘slight’ and ‘bright’ were accidental rhymes but we don’t do half-measures here at Unlaced) until she gets into the real Foie Gras and potatoes of the song in its final verses, where the instrumental incorporates a truly angelic choir of voices and her delivery becomes more panicked and highly strung. It transformed from something run-of-the-mill into a song that embodies and utilises the idea of Fantine’s struggles as a singular representation of the reality of countless impoverished people of Paris during the time of the revolution.
I’m telling you man, always put stock into the sequined top-hatted among us. They will falter but never fail.
A better, stronger life is possible for us all.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 8/10
Emotional Equivalent: The months following those first few weeks post-breakup where it doesn’t rock anymore and you’re once again back to just playing Destiny 2’s tutorial missions over and over in the hope that you can once again feel something. Your housemates are concerned. They have suddenly started telling you that they’re always there if you need to talk.
19
I Dreamed A Dream - Joe McElderry
(The Bit We Care About: 2:46)
There are two comments on this cover on YouTube. One reads, ‘Thanks for adding this one. A great song, beautifully sung by Joe.’ and the other, ‘My fav gay singer’. I did a quick google to check if Mr. McElderry is actually gay and that that comment wasn’t just an outdated yet polite hate comment, but no, he is. Which makes it all the funnier that even here he changes the pronouns of the lover in Fantine’s song to be about a woman. I respect that in this case he’s just doing it for the sheer love of the game. His goals are beyond our understanding, measured in centuries.
Nice to hear a cover that really maxes out a single, low, full male voice like this, even if it doesn’t especially convey much heartbreak or sadness or melancholy or anything much at all. That last verse especially is delivered like this recording was a vocal warm-up or something, and he was just glad to be getting to the end of it so he could get started on the real songs. Incredible backing track here, I will say, and does a lot to inspire the emotion that McElderry’s vocals are slightly lacking in.
He’s really fucking looking into me on this album cover right now, I’m noticing. He seems like a sweet young man. Ah hell… shucks… maybe this version is alright after all…
The Hell They’ve Living Rating: 4/10
Emotional Equivalent: Losing the nerve to change your mind about the sausage roll you’re buying after the Greggs employee tells you they’re not hot only after they’ve already put it in the paper bag. What are you gonna do, make them put them back? I don’t think they can do that.
20
I Dreamed A Dream (Glee Cast Version) (feat. Idina Menzel) - Glee Cast
(The Bit We Care About: 2:11)
I am above making jokes about how corny some Glee covers can be. I am also above pretending that this cover is anything less than pretty decent and fairly affecting to score points on Glee in 2025 like I’m a militant holdout on a Japanese Island who doesn’t know that World War II ended twenty-six years ago. It sounds good! It’s most of the way there! However, it just doesn’t feel like I Dreamed A Dream. The upbeat instrumental with dueting voices just sort of makes it all feel a bit Olympics Biopic, you know? One that your Grandma is gonna like, not the Oscars.
That last verse however? Just weirdly anthemic. I now have the Olympic Biopic thing in my head and it just inspires images of like, slow-motion hugging on the winners podium of the 250 metre handsome-with-a-sad-home-lifes. It’s affecting, but almost like they’re over it through the power of friendship, as if they’re basically ready to perhaps release their inhibitions and maybe even feel the rain on their skin.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 4/10
Emotional Equivalent: Your Grandma asks you to sort out a minor issue with her iPad but you find that you too are stumped, and can see the pride in her eyes fade away as she watches you consult a smarter person for help on the internet, a person who apparently loves your Grandma far more than you. The person on the internet however says that it’s a fairly uncommon and annoying problem for them too. You feel a little of the pride in your Grandmother’s eyes return as they do.
21
I Dreamed A Dream - Punk Rock Factory
(The Bit We Care About: 2:04)
Thought this would be a goof-off one but it’s surprising how well these lyrics do kind of fit with a pop-punk style. The heartbreak and melancholy becomes more teen angst and bored rage, even if Punk Rock Factory (gonna name my upcoming hip-hop group The Rap Shop, I think) aren’t giving Blink-182 as much as they’re giving one of those uncool metal bands who exclusively do epic trailer versions of pop songs only guys who like Zelda and the Roman Empire a little too much are into.
That last verse is much the same. It does hit, but it hits in a way that only makes me think how much I hate homework and jocks and how one day I’m gonna leave my hometown full of posers in the dust when I go to college and put beer up my ass or put bongs up my ass or put a battle of the bands up my ass or whatever happens over there.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 5/10
Emotional Equivalent: High School Sucks!
22
I Dreamed A Dream - Amanda Holden
(The Bit We Care About: 3:23)
It is definitely I Dreamed A Dream. This is definitely a cover of I Dreamed A Dream sung by a competent singer with a decent instrumental. This much is true.
There’s just not a lot here that I like, or that I dislike. If I Dreamed A Dream was a hobby that had its own subreddit this is probably the cover that the aficionados recommend to newbies thinking about getting into I Dreamed A Dream as a budget-friendly and accessible option, just to see if they like it before committing to it.
Instrumental does get to doing a little something on that last verse, but I’m not sure if that’s a compliment to this particular cover or just the nature of those chords in that succession as a universal part of this song no matter who’s singing it.
I respect that Holden chose that last verse of all moments to try out the new way of pronouncing ‘different’ she’d been considering busting out socially, just to see if it has legs.I mean, that’s the only word in that final verse that has any discernible emotion behind it. I have to imagine she did this cover to just read the room on it, like how Steve Coogan has said he test drives his weirder opinions or new ideas in character as Alan Partridge to see if anyone finds them ridiculous before committing to them fully.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 3/10
Emotional Equivalent: Being asked what you think of Chappell Roan’s music in a social setting while being unsure where everyone stands. Staring down the crossroads of opinion. Knowing your life will be very different after answering. Trying to focus on how history is defined by brave men.
23
I Dreamed A Dream (Live) - Carrie Hope Fletcher
(The Bit We Care About: 3:12)
This one was recorded in 2020, a year indubitably worse for the die-hard-musical-going population than the French Revolution was, so this one was kind of playing on easy mode in terms of conveying yearning and loss to that crowd.
It’s great, of course. Nice to get back to a real one of these after Amanda Holden’s and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Haberdashery’s versions. Just everything you want with no qualms. It’s the takeaway that hits. It’s the hail Mary evening film pick that works. It’s the jokes in The Naked Gun that aren’t just mugs to the camera. No fat, no stuffing, just pure French sorrow. Bosh.
Affecting, moving, bombastic, high notes in the final verse that utterly turn your stomach, this is the version of the song you should show people if they’ve never heard it before. Which is why, of course, I’ve waited until the twenty-third entry to do it. All downhill from here, guys. But who knows, we may yet be surprised! It’s such a versatile song, so open to interpretation, it can always reach out and sink its talons into your heart in the most beautiful and unexpected ways, in the most beautiful and unexpected voices…
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 10/10
Emotional Equivalent: My co-runners of Unlaced having to hear me say for the fifth time in the last three months in the group chat that I’m “gonna finish that I Dreamed A Dream thing today” during a publishing drought.
24
I Dreamed A Dream - Louis Nokes
(The Bit We Care About: 3:25)
Honestly, I really thought I’d be able to wring a lot of comedy mileage out of even the best covers of this song, but this one here just knocked the wind out of me.
I have never heard vocals that tugged at me like this, such nuance of emotion and severity of impact with the slightest shifts of octave. I’m not a music critic by any means but this right here has kind of made me re-evaluate all the covers I’ve written about thus far in this piece. I wish I had a joke for this one. I wish there was something humorous or sarcastic to be said about it and it’s particularly, uniquely heart-wrenching take on that final verse- but I truly just have nothing but praise for this one.
Plain and simple. This is I Dreamed A Dream. This is Les Miserables.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: A number somehow higher than 10.
Emotional Equivalent: I dare not say. I dare not joke.
25
I Dreamed A Dream (From “Les Misérables”) - Anne Hathaway
(The Bit We Care About: 3:33)
I can’t say I ever had much rapport with the musical theatre community (my brief dual performance as one of Fagin’s pickpockets and a workhouse boy in the Dartford Community Theatre’s adaptation of Oliver! In 2007 disregarded and forgotten in their foul, nepotistic world) so I don’t care too much about throwing away whatever respect I might have still held with them by this point when I say this is my absolute favourite version of I Dreamed A Dream.
It’s anguished, it’s human, it’s more concerned with being an emotional performance than it is being a defining musical number and it is by way of that that it ends up being the most stirring and upsetting version I’ve listened to, bar none. That final verse is so racked with pain atop such a swelling, majestic instrumental that I genuinely cringe a little when I hear it, it stabs me right in the gut every single time. Very few songs have had such a real emotional punch like that to me, and even fewer maintain it for years like this.
And what’s more, I believed all this even before I saw those photos of Anne Hathaway from Twelfth Night in the blue coat with the sword so you know I’m not just saying this to endear myself to her, either.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 11/10 (That’s the number I was thinking of before!)
Emotional Equivalent: When you were drunk as hell on a night out in an Uber and your mate read out the headline about Trump getting shot but who didn’t mention that he lived, and having to cope with the sudden snatching away of the funniest thing that could have happened in our time. That, for a brief moment, did happen… in your heart.
26
I Dreamed A Dream (From “Les misérables”) (Live) - Lea Salonga
(The Bit We Care About: 3:52)
Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about them not capitalising the ‘M’ in ‘Miserables’ and putting ‘Live’ in separate parentheses right next to the first parentheses, either. I almost respect it. Almost.
I’m kind of setting this one up for failure doing it right after my self-professed favourite, but it is good. It’s really good. It’s I Dreamed A Dream. It’s a very good I Dreamed A Dream. Is it a great I Dreamed A Dream? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely not just a serviceable I Dreamed A Dream. You know?
The cream of the crop when it comes to vaguely upbeat, showtune-y, melodramatic (derogatory) instrumentals in these covers, as Salonga really keeps on trucking in her grand, melancholic, melodramatic (complimentary) way through each and every part that starts straying a little too close to the Eastenders theme sonically.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 6/10
Emotional Equivalent: Snuck in a rustlers burger for breakfast (people do it, it’s not weird, they have a lot of protein, look for yourself) while your girlfriend was asleep so you wouldn’t have to tell her you spent £2.25 on a microwaveable burger, but when you go upstairs she’s awake and asks what smelt so good. It is 8:42am on a weekday.
27
I Dreamed A Dream - Darren Criss
(The Bit We Care About, But Not That Much: 2:10)
Hey there Delilah ass cover lmao.
That last verse is so cheery and and brushed over it is genuinely hilarious, guy is like two degrees of separation away from the iCarly theme song.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 1/10
Emotional Equivalent: The first warm evening of Summer. Waking as a child on Christmas Morning and realising Santa has been. That first sip of a pint on a Friday evening. Seeing Tony Ferguson break his six fight losing streak. A baby’s laugh.
28
I Dreamed A Dream - Kerry Ellis
(The Bit We Care About: 2:28)
I was ready to dislike this one, but honestly, I think it’s just because it’s such a different take on the song that it threw me off. I’ve listened to like fifty of these so far and reviewed twenty-seven of them (almost at the end now, you can do it) and even the way out there ones still are identifiably I Dreamed A Dream even without their lyrics being accurate or even present at all, but this one just goes for something else entirely and in a way, I’m grateful for it.
The last verse is quite moving, it is quite delicate, it is quite I Dreamed A Dream in a vague, not-really-at-all way, but again, I like it. I respect a really intense instrumental (this shit gets close to Phill Collins’ Tarzan score at points) that can still accommodate moments of stillness, and Ellis actually achieves that twangy, whispery, poppy vibe with the song that I imagine Darren Criss might have been angling for. It’s something different, but a different that I don’t hate at all, like accidentally putting your boxers on backwards and enjoying the firmer security that the ass part is providing.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 7/10
Emotional Equivalent: Forgetting to scan your clubcard on a big shop and realising you’re not seeing that big yellow ‘Saved: £6.35’ under your total only when your card is already heading towards the contactless pad with uninterruptible momentum. Going online and googling the stuff you could have bought with £6.35. Realising the answer, in today’s economy, is absolutely nothing. Knowing that the fish rots from the head and that Starmer must resign immediately in shame.
29
I Dreamed A Dream - Manja Vlachogianni
(The Bit We Care About: 2:53)
Vlachogianni has one of those very classic, very parodied European opera-esque singing voices that I have never, until now, actually taken seriously. As someone whose great-grandfather didn’t invent something like the toaster or A3 paper I don’t come from the kind of family who went to the Opera very much at all and the musicals I have seen in a theatre are relatively contemporary. The only places I’ve heard a voice like Vlachogianni’s have been in episodes of The Simpsons where Marge has daydreams about doing something without Homer and in the opening cinematic of Tomb Raider: Chronicles. This is all to say that I have never actually sat and listened to a performance with a voice like hers ever, in my life, and am floored by how stirring it is.
It’s very shrill, it’s very anguished, it’s as pained as you want this song and especially that final verse to be, but this voice is so overly-lyrical and enunciated that it adds a poetic layer to the song, bringing it so much closer to the literature and history that Les Miserables sprung from.
I just looked at her profile and I am shocked to discover Vlacchogianni has only like 19 subscribers and is a relatively unknown modern performer. I genuinely thought I’d Google her and find out she was the favourite singer of like twelve kings and was also somehow an invaluable spy in World War II or something.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 8/10
Emotional Equivalent: Trying to spell Maja Vlachogianni’s name properly with the cyrillic alphabet but you have to use the dumb Google Doc ‘special character’ tool where you have to draw the symbol you want like it’s a book teaching toddlers how to write. You only need the upside down V and the Right Angle, why are you being made to finger paint for them? Giving up and settling for the Anglicised spelling. Making sure you include a paragraph to prove you tried.
30
I Dreamed A Dream - Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir
(The Bit We Care About: 2:35)
I wanted to find something kind of silly for the penultimate entry on this disgustingly long piece, and naturally seeing a group named ‘Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir’ granted it an immediate addition to the playlist. What I found, then, was actually just a deeply beautiful choir performance that made me emotional in concept alone.
This group was begun by Welsh expats in Hong Kong almost fifty years ago and now has members consisting of over a dozen different nationalities who perform songs in Welsh, Chinese, Swahili and even Latin. What a bizarre group of old men, what a truly international, borderless brotherhood of Man unified in their goal of cranking out the hits.
This performance is nothing incredible, but I’m deeply affected by it. Maybe most of that was me googling what the Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir was while I was listening to it, but I don’t give a shit. These are fifty or so old men finding joy in singing in languages from almost every continent, travelling from all corners of the world to do it. If this one doesn’t stir something in you, if hearing that final wrenching verse delivered by so many ageing voices doesn’t get you even a little bit, I fear you reading this far, all the way here, may have been something of a failed exercise.
The Hell They’re Living Rating: 6/10
Emotional Equivalent: Being so intent on finishing this list without reviewing too many samey, normal, good covers you cut it down from 34 to 31, a subtly yet definitely less funny number.
31
J’avais rêvé d’une autre vie - Rose Laurens
(The Bit We Care About: All Of It)
You’ll have to forgive me for how, compared to the other entries on this list, this one might be slightly more annoying to find and listen to if you’re not using the YouTube playlist linked at the top of this article. Not too annoying, granted. You’ll just have to either go to Rose Laurens’ artist profile on whatever streaming service you use or search for this in its entire French title. You can’t find it by looking up ‘I Dreamed A Dream - Rose Laurens’ because that’s not what the title translates to. It translates to ‘I Dreamed Of Another Life’. Not the exact title of the song. That is because, of course, when Rose Laurens recorded this version, I Dreamed A Dream was not the exact song she was singing. This, brother, is the version from the initial concept album for Les Miserables, before any actor in it ever stepped on a stage. The very first version of I Dreamed A Dream ever sung, the very first voice to ever play, in any way, the Fantine we now know of the stage.
Ironically, for the version I’ve saved as the big final boss of this piece, the lyrics of its final verse are not exactly what I have been (occasionally conveniently forgetting I am) judging these songs on. Instead, over a choir of harmonising voices of young women that built from a tinny twinkle like that of a child’s music box, Laurens sings,
I had dreamed of another life,
But life killed my dreams,
Barely begun, it ends
Like a short spring that ends.
It is really something else to hear a song like this, a song I adore, in its earliest stages of conception, sung by a woman known almost exclusively for the one hit wonder Africa (not that one), a glossy, dancey pop tune that was remixed ad infinitum that never got higher than #3 in some European charts. And yet, she is inseparable in the annals of musical history from a song that has become an iconic piece in musical theatre, a song that became the calling card of many a singer, a song that has won women awards for what they did on stage and screen with this take on a character that Rose Laurens first gave spark to in 1980. She was born in Paris, and seven years ago she died in Paris. The rest is history. God fucking bless.
Barely Begun, It Ends, Like A Short Spring That Ends Rating: 10/10
Emotional Equivalent: Knowing people stopped reading this after the third one. Anguishing over whether you should take out that joke about the hypnosis video you wrote on a whim twenty entries ago in case it’s too far beyond the pale for your girlfriend’s Mother, who reads everything you write. Your Grandma will too, you’re just realising also. Deciding that no- a Captain goes down with his ship. Vive la France.
