Here’s my list.
Sympathy For The Devil - Laibach
Paint it Black - The Residents
Gin and Juice - The Gourds (country version!)
Daydream Believer - Shonen Knife
Holy Diver - Pat Boone
Just about anything by Dread Zeppelin counts as unusual. On the off chance you haven’t heard they’re a Led Zeppelin tribute band. Who only play reggae. The lead singer is an Elvis impersonator.
Saturday Night Hay Fever – An album devoted exclusively to bluegrass covers of disco songs.
I have it. I love it.
Skipping Discs also has an album dedicated to female artists covering Bowie’s songs. The album is called Spiders from Venus. Sounds interesting, but I’m not a big enough Bowie fan to buy it.
I’ll see that and raise you a Gin and Juice punk cover by Pennywise.
Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters
I know I’ve heard the original before, but just don’t remember it that well. And I know that some people won’t like it - but I love it!
Susan
I’ve been a big fan of Rebuild The Wall by Luther Wright And The Wrongs for a while now. It’s a country/Bluegrass version of Pink Floyd’s the Wall. What’s weird about it is how well some of the songs work.
thwartme
Lol Coxhill – I Am the Walrus – hands down the most unusual cover ever made. Chanted by three schoolkids with Coxhill playing random notes on the piano.
Madman Across the Water–Sandra Bernhard
I wish I could remember what show she was on when she sang it. It was wonderfully strange.
John Lennon’s Imagine re-done by A Perfect Circle. It’s like a darker shade of Imagine.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door done with a reggae arrangement by Dolly Parton with Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
“I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” - Devo
Hayseed Dixie does bluegrass versions of AC/DC songs.
Tori Amos’s cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit has gotta be up there.
Don’t forget the entire Let it Be album (sans Let it Be of course) and Life is Life in which Laibach turned what is possibly the worst song in the world into…what could possibly be the best song in the world. All by making it as serious as it could possibly be.
I’d have to go with both albums by Kiki&Herb…here’s a sample of some of their covers/covercompilations;
- Frosty the Snowman
- Exit Music for a Film
- Who’s Child is This?: What Child is This?/Deep Inside/Crucify *featuring Debbie Harry
- Fox in the Snow/Holiday: *featuring the Erie Institutional Choir
- People Die: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer/Smells Like Teen Spirit/Suicide is Painless
- Lilybelle/Blasphemous Rumours
- The Big Time
- Running Up That Hill
- Those Were the Days: *featuring Michael Cavadias, Debbie Harry, Isaac Mizrahi, Molly Ringwald, and Rufus Wainwright
And I second “Comfortably Numb” by Scissor Sisters
The Beatles 'Til There Was You (from the Music Man)
Waylon Jennings Macarthur Park
Herbie Hancock’s disco Stairway to Heaven
Dynamite Hack’s version of “Boyz-N-The-Hood”. Man, I love their version. Imagine a couple of white dudes singing gangsta rap set to a mellow acoustic guitar folk-rock beat. It’s nuts.
The Bobs are an a cappella quartet and they’ve done quite a few covers. Purple Haze, Psycho Killer, Particle Man and White Room are some of the stranger ones. But the best was about a year ago when they had a special concert in Worcester, Massachusetts to perform…
Rhapsody in Blue for four voices and piano.
I saw them in person a few years ago. I laughed my ass off. What a great show to watch.
I see I’ve been beaten to the punch on Hayseed Dixie. Dolly Parton did a cover of Collective Soul’s “Shine” that, while not the weirdest, certainly surprised me.
Lyle Lovett did a cover of Stand By Your Man.
Shane McGowan - My Way: Ol’ Blue Eyes meets Ol’ Brown Teeth.