This is getting eerie :-) I use SofS in my course to help teach the concept of musical interpretation, how one can take the same piece of music and, with changes in tempo, dynamics, timbre, etc., make it speak a very different message. I make it a personal example, saying that I as a Boomer appreciate most the "urtext" Simon/Garfunkel version, while my now late wife disliked that and preferred the GenX style Disturbed arrangement, and our Millennial daughter thinks we're both old coots and greatly prefers the more recent Pentatonix use of lush harmonies--much like one person prefers the original piano version of Mossurgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," another the orchestrated version by Ravel, and yet another the rock-band arrangement by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, though it is basically the same music in all three.
And don't get me started about the hundred covers in a hundred genres of Elvis' "I Can't Help Falling in Love," which itself is a takeoff on an aria from the 1700s by Jean-Paul-Egide Martini, Marie Antoinette's composer. Just as Chairman Mao might have put it, let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred genres of music contend. (The socialists among the students love that reference.) I had a presentation about "Can't Help" which I used back when I taught rock music history for another college, that closed its Orlando class about two years ago. Sorry to ramble so much...
Don’t apologize; I enjoyed your post.
I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that you, your wife and your daughter all preferred different versions.
Please accept my condolences on the loss of your wife.
As for “Sound of Silence”, I interpret the the original as a “warning” and Disturbed’s rendition as “rage” because the warning wasn’t heeded.
The Pentatonix version is very good but, IMO, not as good as S&G and Disturbed.
It was a pleasure to converse with you.
Here’s a good one to your point
Tennessee Whiskey by George Jones
https://youtu.be/ggkyQ8RqOvc
Tennessee Whiskey by Chris Stapleton
https://youtu.be/IBLruNfUqUs