True, and I love them, but I don’t think they strictly count since they aren’t the full song.
Madonna’s cover of “Fever” (popularized by Peggy Lee) was another travesty and a tragedy.
The Flying Lizards’ cover of the Beatles’ “Money” definitely belongs on a list of weird, amusing, offbeat, and odd cover songs.
I’m also extremely fond of William Shatner’s cover of Pulp’s “Common People,” which he recorded with help from Ben Folds and Joe Jackson. You can roll your eyes at Shatner’s 1960s-era attempts at spoken-word psychedelia, but his 2004 Folds-produced album *Has Been * was seriously good, and “Common People” is just a fun, rockin’ song that’s hard to dislike.
“There’s an old Australian stock man…er, rock band…”
Incidentally, the Rolf Harris “Stairway” cover is part of an LP called Stairways to Heaven, which was put together by the Australian TV show The Money or the Gun. The album also has covers by tribute bands who play in the style of the Beatles, the B-52s, Elvis Presley, and the Doors, along with a big-band style, a disco style, an operatic style, a reggae style, and a be-bop style.
There is always the Nine Inch Richards’ cover of the Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer to God”, entitled Closer to Hogs and set to cheerful country-music style instrumentation complete with farmyard noises whenever the f-word pops up in the original lyrics.
It’s really quite silly.
Nirvana seems to attract a lot of odd covers, from the loungey take on “About A Girl” (Cibo Matto) to piano-and-voice (Tori Amos) and Vegas swing (Paul Anka) versions of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. All of them are quite good. I know Herbie Hancock covered “All Apologies”, but I’ve never heard it.
While we’re mentioning jazz, an excellent source of odd covers is the piano trio The Bad Plus. They combine Brubeck-style block chords with driving rhythms while covering everything from Abba’s “Knowing Me Knowing You” to Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”.
I just saw this on YouTube the other day! In fact…goes to search
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA8OmK3qslw
I love it. It was awesome seeing Barbara from that era.
The 2nd weirdest cover I’ve ever heard is Morgan Fisher’s take on Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights.” It’s truly demented (and available on iTunes of all places!) The 1st weirdest cover is the J. Davis Trio’s take on Kate’s “There Goes A Tenner” turning an old-fashioned song about robbing a bank into a rap/hip hop gangsta epic. It’s very very cool. It’s on a wonderful album of Kate covers called “I Wanna Be Kate.”
kung fu lola’s “I am a cover-version junkie. (I am also a sucka for female solo artists, as you will discover in a moment” gives me an opening, but these aren’t weird or offbeat, they’re just wonderful.
Here Comes The Flood, Mercy Street (both Peter Gabriel), Space Oddity (David Bowie), And Dream of Sheep (Kate Bush), Come Undone (Duran Duran), Immortality (Bee Gees), Lily Of The Valley (Queen). Thank you. I couldn’t help myself.
I didn’ read through the entire thread so I guess someone could’ve mentioned this already, but:
Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme doing “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden.
Really, a terrific cover.
Seriously, I’m not making this up.
Someone here on the SDMB (I forget who) once pointed out a link to a band called “Meatbee”…and their cover of the “transformers” theme. Their acoustic cover.
It’s quite pleasant, actually.
His polka version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the full song, and it’s a thing of greatness.
I’ve posted this in a lot of cover threads, but Melissa Kaplan’s cover of “Ring of Fire” is pretty weird and absolutely nothing like the original (and I love it). It can be downloaded from her website here.
On Robert Marien’s “Broadway Montreal” CD, he sings “Le fantom de l"opera” and “Le musique de la nuit.” The only French covers from Phantom of the Opera.
Who did the lounge version of Oasis’s “Wonderwall”, and, IIRC, claimed it was the original?
In addition to this and the Sympathy album thelurkinghorror mentioned, they do great covers of Queen’s One Vision (in German) and the Opus one-hit wonder Live is Life (redone as Life is Life, IIRC). Both lovingly rendered pieces of pseudo-facist mockery.
I utterly loath the original “My Sharona”. The Veruca Salt version is one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard.
Inevitable nitpick: that’s Barrett Strong’s “Money,” also covered by the Beatles.
For something totally off the wall, how about a CD of mainly Beach Boys with a few David Bowie and/or Fleetwood Mac numbers performed by a bunch of elementary school kids from somewhere in the backwoods of British Columbia circa 1975?
We’re three pages deep and no one has mentioned the Sid Vicious cover of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”?
Anastaseon mentioned someone covering Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind”. Turnabout being fair play, Willie Nelson put out an album of covers of torch and pop standards… Stardust?
The Toy Dolls speed-punk cover of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” (they changed it to a guitar instead of a fiddle and the title is “The Devil Went Down to Scunthorpe”) is a hoot.
The flip side to Debbie Boone’s mega million seller “You Light Up My Life” is ABBA’s “Hasta Manana.”
In a hidden track on Reverb Deluxe, The Derailers do a great country-style cover of Prince’s “Raspberry Beret.”