I like to think of an album like a house. The inside of the house is the artist’s experience they want to portray. The audience doesn’t know exactly how the interior looks. The music, lyrics and cover art of an album show us the front of the house. Interviews, album reviews and other windows allow us to see more. But there’s a less talked about way to see into an album and that’s cover albums―the home’s reconstruction by entirely different owners.

Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., two of the five original members of The 5th Dimension, reconstruct the home John Lennon and Paul McCartney created in a new cover album titled Blackbird: Lennon-McCartney Icons. The duo’s take on classics from the Beatles produces a soulful, gospel-tinged record placing these classic songs under the lens of civil and human rights.

Following great political unrest in America in 2020, McCoo and Davis Jr. wanted to join protests and make a statement the same way they did in the ’60s with songs like “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” And covering another ‘60s-era politically minded track, “Blackbird,” led to the duo covering other Beatles songs they felt held the same message: hope, love and unity.

“Ticket To Ride” illustrates how McCoo and Davis’s covers change the Beatles’ work entirely. Originally a song about a girl who refuses to sleep with a Beatle, the crooning vocals of Davis companied with a soulful organ make the music seem like a ballad to the Montgomery bus boycotts led by powerful women like Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks. It’s a reminder of the two very different houses white people and black people lived in during the Beatles’ heyday.

The McCartney song “Silly Love Songs” is sluggish compared to the energetic cover on this CD. The pair make transforming the Beatles into funk and gospel seem effortless. The horn lines and backing vocals add depth and a lushness that cheapens the original while simultaneously extracting the original’s strengths like its compelling lyrics and song structure.

Blackbird: Lennon McCartney Icons does everything a cover album should. It revives the original and imbues it with new meaning while retrofitting it with the spirit of the persons performing the songs. Fan or not of the Beatles, there is something for everyone on this CD.