I prefer Steam Powered Giraffe’s cover of “Diamonds” by Rihanna
But I don’t like the way Rihanna says “diamonds”, so I don’t like her version at all and robots make everything better.
Trollfest cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic”
The Gourds did it first and did it better.
As far as I can tell, they were one of the pioneers of the “let’s do a (rap) song in a completely unexpected genre”. It’s starting to feel really played out now, with heartfelt acoustic versions of every ridiculous song recorded over the past decade.
I like the Flying Pickets’ covers of Psycho Killerand Master of War, both from their 1984 album “Lost Boys.”
Also, Simon and Garfunkel’s cover of Times They Are a’Changin’.
This one is embarrasing, as I’ve been a fan of Uncle Tupelo and successor acts for years, and the fact that this is Tupelo with Tweedy singing lead, and I didn’t know about it until a few weeks ago, really annoys me. Or maybe excites me, in that it proves there’s still a lot of amazing music to discover. Yeah, that’s the way to look at it.
Uncle Tupelo - I Wanna Be Your Dog (Iggy Pop and the Stooges)
I don’t know that this really counts as a cover, because he had all the other members of Queen backing him, but George Michael’s rendition of “Somebody to Love” absolutely floored me. Before seeing that, I would have told you nobody but Freddy Mercury could do justice to that song.
Um… you link goes to the most WTF cover of the day…The Oak Ridge Boys covering The White Stripes Seven Nation Army.
Awesome in it’s own right. Truly an example of Awfully Entertaining.
I’m pretty fond of Alana Davis’s cover of Don’t Fear The Reaper.
I second Eva Cassidy’s covers and Richard Thompson’s cover of Oops I Did It Again.
In BioShock: Infinite, anachronistic songs crop up in several places, because plot. The setting is 1912, and the songs are covers of more recent works done in period styles.
First up is barbershop quartet A Mighty Wind covering the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”. I prefer it to the original.
Later, there’s Jessy Carolina’s really striking spiritual rendition of CCR’s “Fortunate Son”.
The game also features “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” on calliope, a crooner “Shiny Happy People”, a waltz version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, and the “Tainted Love” blues. I didn’t find any of them especially appealing, but I figured I’d include them in case anyone was interested. (Several of these are the work of Scott Bradlee and the Postmodern Jukebox–vintage covers of pop songs seems to be his/their schtick.)
Needs more cowbell.
I forgot the Baseballs doing ‘Umbrella’. I loathed the original, but this cover can cheer up your day in three minutes flat.
Also, seeing as Johnny Cash is wandering around this thread: his coverof his own’Give My Love to Rose’. The earlier version is your basic depressing country song. The version forty or fifty years later is a devastating lament for how a life can be wrecked, wasted, fall through the cracks and be gone. Same song, same singer, not the same thing at all.
Natalie Merchant doing Space Oddity. Man, I do love me some Natalie Merchant.
R.E.M. doing Wichita Lineman. Bill campbell would be cool with their treatment.
And IMHO, one of the best covers ever:
Cowboy Junkies doing Sweet Jane I think I’ve read the Lou loved their version.
Maybe none of those are “What the…” qualifiers though. How about:
Ray Lamontagne doing Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy?
Glen.
George Michaels is an underrated singer, in my opinion.
This is going to sound weird, but Sheila Behman doing “Desperado” in a more interesting version than either the Eagles or Linda Ronstadt:
This is from an album called The Langley Schools Music Project. It was a recording of elementary school students in a rural section of British Columbia made in 1976 and 1977 doing some rock and roll songs of the time. The music teacher there had no idea what kind of music kids were supposed to sing, so he just had them do his favorite music. He put together an album of it. In 2000 someone found a used copy of that album in a store and got a record company to put out that album the next year. The kids aren’t in any usual sense good singers, but the versions of the songs that they do are very interesting. Sheila Behman is the soloist on “Desperado”.
I was going to also mention their version of “Space Oddity”, but there’s an even more interesting version of that, the one that the astronaut Chris Hadfield did in the International Space Station:
This reminded me of one I’d forgotten: this one is fairly recent, and it blew me away. It’s a group of young kids/teens covering Tool’s “46 and 2.” Damn, they’re good. The girl lead singer has a career ahead of her, IMO, if she’s that good at that age.
That’s not Norah Jones, it’s mislabeled on YouTube. Here’s a pretty good cover from her of Tom Waits’s “Long Way Home”. I always liked her take on Hank Williams’s “Cold Cold Heart” as well.
Jill Sobule covers “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” by Warren Zevon.