I once heard a bluegrass rendition (banjo, in fact) of Blondie’s Heart of Glass.
It was actually pretty decent.
the best wierd cover is the afghan whigs version of TLC’s “creep.”
greg dulli, the once-lead singer of the whigs, released a cover album last year. he does mary j blige’s “real love”, bjork’s “hyperballad”, fleetwood mac’s “what makes you think i’m the one”, and coltrane’s “a love supreme.” not as good as vintage whigs stuff, but interesting.
I thought of a couple of others. “Word Up” and “Another Brick in the Wall” by Korn.
It may be the version by Joan Jett of the Drop Dead Gorgeous soundtrack. That’s the only one I’m aware of, at least.
If iTunes had that, I’d get it to have all three parts in one track.
“Tainted Love,” the mid-80s hit by Soft Cell, was originally an old soul song. Great cover.
Which reminds me: I think Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” is the best. cover. EVER!
He also covered Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus on another album.
In addition to I Will Survive, Cake covered the Willie Nelson track Sad Songs and Waltzes. Willie covered Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time.
Cowboy Junkies slow down a number of songs, including Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane, Springsteen’s State Trooper, Neil Young’s Powderfinger, and Robert Johnson’s Me and the Devil Blues.
Lots of punk covers qualify: Dead Kennedys did Viva Las Vegas, Minor Threat did Stepping Stone, Black Flag did Louie Louie, the Clash with Pressure Drop and I Fought the Law, Operation Ivy did These Boots are Made for Walking, 7 Seconds did that one and Nena’s 99 Red Balloons, and Husker Du did Donovan’s Sunshine Superman, and the Ramones with any number of covers… that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.
Social Distortion deserves their own paragraph - they’ve got covers on just about every album, including Ring of Fire, the Stones’ Backstreet Girl, It’s All Over Now, and Under my Thumb, the country classic Making Believe, and CCR’s Bad Moon Rising. Mike Ness, the band’s singer, has a couple of solo releases that include some more traditional stuff, but that’s closer to the vein it was originally in.
Dwight Yoakam did a whole CD full of covers, with maybe the most interesting being *Train in Vain * by the Clash. Certainly was … different.
Actually, it was on the same album, The Man Comes Around as Hurt and a really breath-taking cover of Desperado. IMHO, one of the best albums I ever heard. Wish I hadn’t misplaced it…
I have a copy of Wilco covering Love Will Keep Us Together, and the only strange thing about it is that they actually turned it into a really good song.
Of course, DEVO’s “Satisfaction” and “Are you Experienced?”
Ben Folds Five did a cover of “She don’t use jelly” by the Flaming Lips which is exactly 204 times better than the original. IT changed it from some crappy song to a nice jazzy lounge type song that works very well.
Oh some others: Stevie Wonder covered “Light My Fire” but its not nearly as good as the Doors’ version. Sublime covered “Scarlet Begonias” and added a nice rap part. It sounds bad in theory but I actually like their version as much as the original. Jimi Hendrix’s renditions of “All Along the Watch Tower” and the national anthem are classic. All of Zeppelin’s covers are much better than their originals. Rage Against the Machine’s cover album “Renegades” is very good, and their covers are total reinventions of most of the songs (“Ghost of Tom Joad” “How I could Just Kill a Man” “Microphone Fiend” and “Maggie’s Farm” stand out on that album.)
As a slight hijack, can anyone think of any rap songs covered by known rap artists? I can only think of two, Snoop Dogg covering “Ladi Dadi” and “The Vapors.”
Big Daddy’s “Welcome to the Jungle” sung to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is both odd and hilarious.
One more – while on vacation in LA years ago, I heard a big band jazzy version of “White Wedding.” It was a duet, with a male and a female singer. I wish I knew how to get a hold of this one – it rocked.
That must be The Postal Service(haven’t seen Garden State, but the song was big about 18 months ago). I didn’t realize it was a cover. Who was the orginal by? And was it an 80s song?
[QUOTE=elfkin477]
Strange and fun would be Travis’ cover of Brittney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” [/cover]
As compared to Darius’ version which is disturbing in so MANY ways…
The version on the Garden State soundtrack is an acoustic cover by labelmates Iron and Wine which originally appeared as a B-side on the Postal Service single for “Such Great Heights” Unlike the original poster, I wouldn’t call it “easy listening” which implies something a bit different than lo-fi singer/songwriter stuff to me.
I guess The Postal Service also did a cover of Phil Collins’ Against All Odds.
Not long after reading this thread, I heard an interview on NPR with Alexandra Patsavas (apparently the music supervisor for The OC), where she talked about her favorite covers. (You can hear the interview here.)
One of the really weird ones she mentions is a cover of Kelis’ Milkshake by some guy named Buddy who operates out of LA. (You can download that one from his website here.)
Many of my favoruites have been mentioned, but here are a few more:
Social Distortion Ring of Fire (J. Cash)
Screaming Jay Hawkins Heart Attack and Vine (Tom Waits)
Johnny Cash Mercy Seat (Nick Cave)
Bella Fleck Amazing Grace (bass solo) (?)
Cowboy Junkies Blue Moon (pretty much everybody)
The Heptones Suspicious Minds (Elvis)