Lady Willpower, by Morrissey
Gosh, I admire the guy just for covering a song that I thought was terminally uncool - and doing an exceptional job of it.
“Great” is so subjective, but I like this one of late. A bit of a change from the source material. Little Martha, by Holly Bowling
And if there’s anyone unfamiliar with the original, here’s the Allman Bros version.
Here’s Chuck Prophet playing You Make My Dreams Come True, on Live at Daryl’s House (Daryl Hall). Chuck’s fairly new to me, and I posted about him here. Really like his work, and it’s hard for me to find new (to me) artists I like these days.
And here’s the original Hall & Oates version, though I’d be surprised if it were actually needed.
The most outstanding example for me personally is by Yes.
Yes’s rock-‘n’-roll cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America.”
During the introduction Chris Squire plays Leonard Bernstein’s “America” as counterpoint in the 6/8=3/4 tresillo rhythm for four bars. At least half of the track is a rockabilly jam between twin lead guitarists Steve Howe and Delaney Bramlett.
Luther Wright and The Wrongs - Rebuild the Wall – a surprisingly great bluegrass version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. Used to be played at concerts over the loudspeaker before TAPFS or Brit Floyd came onstage. Various songs all over YouTube.
“Stay the blazes home” - Stephen McNeil, Premier of Nova Scotia
This probably shouldn’t count, but Cheap Trick (and guests) did a killer live cover of the entire Sgt. Pepper album and released it as a video. The reason that it probably shouldn’t count is that it was an almost perfect, note-for-note performance…probably the next best thing to seeing the Fab Four perform it. But they get props for doing a “studio album” live and doing it so well.
Last time we had a thread like this I posted In My Life covered by Johnny Cash. And you know what? I’m going to do it again. As I said last time, put simply, he just makes the song his own.
I can’t remember if I also posted some of these: there is a long pop reggae tradition of covers, some of which are absolute gems. I give you Neil Diamond’s** Red Red Wine**, made a wonder of the art by Tony Tribe*; and David Gates’ Everything I Own rendered marvelous by Ken Boothe.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t bang on about John Cale last time, but I will now. He has an unusual style of covering songs - slowing them down to bring out a new intensity that you didn’t realise they had. I give you Heartbreak Hotel; and expecially Streets Of Laredo. Odd.
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so definitive that UB40 thought they were covering a Tony Tribe song.
While checking out some of the songs mentioned, I came across this performanceof The Weight, which features musicians participating from a dozen countries around the world. The singing and playing are very fine, and the mixing and production are even more impressive.
Robbie Robertson does play on the song, but he’s not leading things, so I’d call it a cover. Ringo is the other featured celebrity.