Didn’t Sid Vicious cover My Way?
Of course any cover by William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy would be up there. I wonder if we can get them to cover Peaches and Herb’s biggest duets?
Or, on strange covers I’d like to see, maybe GWB and Condi Rice dueting on I Got You, Babe.
I win.
Cornershop covering ‘Norwegian Wood’ as a surrealistic thing and doing the lyrics in Punjabi.
And it’s brilliant.
David Bowie’s cover of See Emily Play is purty darn weird, though I guess it’s still similar to Syd Barrett’s weirder songs.
I heard a really bad cover of Losing My Religion by this band called Graveworm. It’s metallized, and they change part of the lyrics to:
“I thought that I heard you crying
I thought that I heard you scream
I think I thought I saw you die”
According to my music major/APC-freak friend, the harmony of the first part of the song is done entirely in perfect 4ths and 5ths, so it’s essentially neither major or minor. Gives it a really spooky atmosphere.
There’s Toadliquor’s doom metal arrangement of “Fanfare for the Common Man” (which they retitled “Also Sprach Zarathustra” for some reason). It’s quite possibly one of the best covers of all time.
In the same spirit, the Meat Purveyors did a bluegrass cover of Ratt’s Round and Round that, for some reason, I’ve grown to like.
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by Samantha Fox.
I kid you not.
Here’s an unusual one: Tori Amos’s cover of Eminem’s “'98 Bonnie & Clyde”. All the more haunting since it’s a skirt singing from a man’s POV, and still somehow as good as the original.
Any cover by Tori Amos pretty much fits the bill. She could make “Mary Had a Little Lamb” an angst filled, slightly erotic ballad.
Big Daddy always does amusing covers. They take “current” hits and retrofit them into 50’s-60’s styles.
One listen to Guns 'N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” sung to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” should win you over.
My roommate played her cover of If 6 Was 9 for me. Apparently she hooked up her piano directly to a Maxwell amp. It sounded so cool.
Richard Cheese does jazzy lounge covers. His mellow version of “Down with the Sickness” can be heard during the opening credits of Dawn of the Dead. “The Rockafeller Skank” and “Smack My Bitch Up” are also pretty crazy, as he gets sick of repeating the same few words and starts rambling.
Their medieval chamber version of “Light My Fire” is good too.
Any cover song done by Skankin’ Pickle. 
Yeah, it’s her piano through a Marshall amp like the kind Hendrix used. Very distorted, very weird. And in case the combination of piano, distortion and her singing isn’t weird enough, she starts singing “What Child is This?” at the end. An odd cover even by her standards.
Wow, Marsall/Maxwell… I’m a little embarrassed, heh. Does it show that I only stick to acoustic non-plug-in-able instruments?
If you can find it, Mingo Saldivar has a Tejano/Ranchero cover of “Ring of Fire” that is brilliant. iTunes has it (Rueda de Fuego) if you want the AAC.
I like Pat Boone’s “Crazy Train” better than his “Holy Diver.”
Serge Gainsbourg provoked outrage when he sang “La Marseille” as a reggae song (“Aux Armes Et Cetera.”)
Tricky’s cover of Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” rearranged a old-school rap classic into a trip-hop song with lilting female vocals (“Got a letter from the government the other day, opened it read it, said they were suckers, they wanted me for their army or whatever, picture me givin a damn I said never.”)
Brad Mehldau has some beautiful covers of Radiohead done as piano solos. His “Paranoid Android” is awesome.
Similarly, The Bad Plus has two great covers on their album “These are the Vistas”: the always fun “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Heart of Glass.” The Bad Plus are a jazz trio with an awesome pianist.
Shatner covers, of all songs, Pulp’s “Common People” on his new album. No idea why he picked that one.
The Flaming Lips covered Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and turned it into a psycho-stalker ballad.
Phish’s cover of “The Great Gig in the Sky” done with a vacuum cleaner instead of women singing has to rank up there as well.
Wha’? Belle and Sebastian’s “Fox in the Snow”? Unspeakable …
Which reminds me: Rasputina do a horribly off-key, weird cover of “Fox in the Snow” as well.
ANOTHER Big Daddy fan! I thought I was all alone!
Or how about “Like A Virgin” sung to the tune of “Venus?”
Hey Virgin…Oh Virgin…
Seen them live several times. They’re wonderful!
Well, when I saw Faith No More in concert about 14 years ago, they closed their set with a cover of the Commodores’ “I’m Easy.”
The crowd kept thinking it was a joke… only AFTER they left the stage did we all realize, “that wasn’t a joke- they really just did a faithful cover of a Lionel Freaking Richie song!”
“Mr Tambourine Man”, from William Shatner. I urge everyone in this thread to drop everything and find this song. Absolutely the strangest released-to-mainstream son I have ever heard.
I also love Shonen Knife’s “On Top of the World”, originally from the Carpenters. Shonen Knife has perhaps the worst set of Engrish accents (they’re Japanese) I’ve known, and they’re kinda bad at the whole “singing well” thing, but they play their hearts out and mangle the hell out of pretty much everything they sing. Extremely entertaining.