So did Crack The Sky
Simple Man
Original - Lynyrd Skynyrd
Cover - Shinedown
In 1969-1970, The Original Caste had a U.S. Top 40 hit with One Tin Soldier. In 1971 Coven also notched their own Top 40 hit with the song, and I cannot tell the two versions apart.
Interesting. Curious that they are so close together; I wonder if people just didn’t notice it was a different band.
In the early 1990s, Ugly Kid Joe had a coverof Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” that was pretty faithful to the original. Sure, it was in a slightly different key and it was a bit heavier on the percussion, but otherwise it was pretty similar.
Somewhat related: In 1971 Cymarron had a U.S. Top 20 hit with the song Rings. Three years later, a similar version by Lobo made it to #43. (Lobo was the stage name for solo singer Roland Kent LaVoie). According to Casey Kasem, the reason Lobo recorded the song is because a lot of his less-informed fans thought he had recorded the original version, and he got annoyed when in concert they kept requesting that he sing “his big hit” Rings.
the lead singer of Depeche mode has a nice cover of "heroes " out
When David Lee Roth covered Louis Prima’s cover of “Just a Gigolo” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody”, his arrangement was almost identical to Prima’s. One of the local DJs would cue up both versions, start playing them at the same time, then switch back and forth from one version to the other. They lined up perfectly, from start to finish.
Robert John released a nearly identical version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in 1972, 11 years after The Tokens had a hit with it.
Of course, these were only two of the many different takes over the years of 1939’s “Mbube” from an African group known as Solomon Linda & the Evening.
That’s a cool version but I don’t think it’s particularly spot-on to the original. I think some of their covers of This Must be the Place are more spot-on. Eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kghEAghEP-s&t=60s
NYE Denver?
Echo & The Bunnymen’s cover of “People Are Strange”: The Lost Boys - Soundtrack - People Are Strange - By Echo & The Bunnymen - - YouTube
I would mention the song Stacy’s Mom.
Written and recorded by Fountains of Wayne it was (apparently) widely assumed to be by Bowling For Soup. So they covered it. The cover sounding (not surprisingly) very similar to the original - although I prefer the cover!
For some minor added irony Fountains of Wayne were deliberately trying to sound like The Cars.
TCMF-2L
An interesting subcategory is sound-alikes by name-alikes, where a sneaky record company releases a version with an artist name very similar to the original. Two cases that I know of:
In 1960, Gary Mills recorded the original version of Look For a Star, which reached #26 in the U.S. However, a rush-release by Gary Miles (really James Carson) did even better, reaching #16.
In the mid-1990s, Macarena by Los del Rio was a huge international hit. And the version by Los del Mar did pretty good too, reaching #71 in the U.S. and #43 in the U.K.
[quote=“GESancMan, post:30, topic:825482”]
From the OP:
Yeah, in my previous post I was agreeing with you.
Just came across this
Can’t touch Leonid & Friends, the bestChicago cover band in the world.
Kurt Vile does a great job covering “Rollin’ with the Flow”. It was originally made famous as recorded by Charlie Rich in the `70s. Vile’s cover is a little fresher, but still true to the original.
The amusing thing is, stations* that wouldn’t play Toto if you bribed them, have put Weezer’s nearly identical cover on heavy rotation.
If there’s a point, I suppose that would have to be it: get stations to play music they wouldn’t otherwise play, because the ‘right’ band rather than the wrong one is playing it.
*Yes, DC101, I’m talking about you.
This isn’t quite a “spot-on” cover, because you can tell it’s a different singer … but when George Michael sang “Somebody to Love” with Queen in 1995, I thought it was as close to being as good as the original as you can get.