Cover Tune Shootout - Page 2

Though it's not reinventing the song or anything, Bruce Springsteen doing Warren Zevon's "My Ride's Here" for Warren Zevon was a nice touch.

Also Joseph Arthur's (?) cover of the Smith's "There is a Light that Never Goes Out". The violins at the end add a creepy touch that fits the song just right.

Bah, can they cover a pop song and make it sound like a Bond theme? I love this, she's like 100.

I'm not going to try to say any of these are better or worse than the originals, but they are some of my favorite covers:
Pearl Jam covering Townsend's "Let My Love Open The Door"
Sarah Mclachlan covering "Blackbird"
R.E.M. covering Syd Barrett's "Dark Globe"
Michael Stipe teaming up with Radiohead to redo "Leave"
Gary Jules covering Tears for Fears' "Mad World"
Pretty much anything by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.

I'm with you on that, but I'd probably deny it if captured.

Seconded.

A couple of my faves:

A Perfect Circle doing Failure's "The Nurse Who Loved Me."

Megadeth doing Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots."

Weezer doing Pixies' "My Velouria."

...and two of my most loathed to the point of irrational, misplaced anger:

A Perfect Circle doing Depeche Mode's "People Are People."

Fall Out Boy doing MJ's "Beat It."

Garage Inc. has whole bunch of good covers I think; "So What", "Stone Cold Crazy", "Am I Evil?", "Tuesday's Gone" with Pepper Keenan of Corrosion of Conformity.

Monster Magnet's versions of "Brainstorm" and "The Right Stuff" (by Robert Calvert, not NKOTB)

To me, the definitive version.

His version of "Like a Rolling Stone" is even better.

I'll add:

"You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch", Aimee Mann

"Hallelujah", Rufus Wainwright

"Viva Las Vegas", Dead Kennedys and/or Shawn Colvin

"Mad World", Gary Jules

I've always loved Propellerheads version of 'On her majesties secret service'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is3rjLZ-KOQ

Pyogenesis' cover of 'Africa' is a great example of putting your own spin on a song, while staying very loyal to the original (at least in the vocals department).

A) The song is an Irish traditional called Whiskey In The Jar.

and

B) Bite your fucking tongue. (wink for the rude but I still disagree)

Renn Brown severely underrates The Animals.

The answer to this in that the cover is better than the original is The Melvins doing Goin' Blind originally by Kiss.

IMO, this is by far the worst cover song of all time.

Ben Harper - The Drugs Don't Work
The Blood Brothers - Under Pressure
Cave In - N.I.B.
Failure - Enjoy The Silence
Faith No More - I Started a Joke
Rage Against the Machine - Fuck The Police
System of a Down - The Metro

I didn't want to harp on someone else's taste, but I agree.
And while I'm harping:

That's also up (down?) there.

Also, if there's a song that people need to stop covering is Enjoy the Silence... it's so widespread, I fear waking up one day and realizing I did it by accident.

The worst cover of all time is Bruce Springsteen and Axl Rose covering "Come Together". Talk about a bad couple of voices to mesh.

At least the keyboardist from Depeche Mode said Failure's version is better then their own.

Nina Gordon's cover of 'Straight outta compton' is strangely alluring.

I'm amazed no-one's mentioned Alanis Morrissette's cover of 'My Humps'

To each their own, but if APC's Nurse Who Loved Me cover is the worst cover you've ever heard, you haven't been listening to nearly enough music.

It's a strange cover, to be sure, but miles from anything resembling out and out BAD.

A case can definitely be made for People Are People, though.

Now, you wanna talk worst cover ever?

Y'all gotta try the all-Al Jolson speed metal cover band The Slappin' Mammys.

Johnny Cash's cover of "Desperado" starts out cool. Then Don Henley's background vocals kick in, and that version is ruined too.

I could listen to their version of "The Boxer" pretty much all day.

They're two different animals -- the Thin Lizzy one is more a tale of woe, while the Metallica one comes across like the guy will bust out of prison and keep rockin' across the highlands eventually.

"Do ya think I'm sexy" - Revolting Cocks
Just awesome.

I agree that they're two different animals. It's just that Metallica's is some kind of devolved, idiotic animal by comparison. I've always thought it was in particularly simplistic taste that they covered a song that was a pretty brilliant reinvention to begin with. Metallica didn't bother to reinvent the song, itself, but just used the Lizzy template and sped it up. Listen to the Pogues' version for a more traditional take and think of how many other ways you could change that song without directly aping Thin Lizzy.

Jesus, how could I forget that?

Also, and semi-related/nearly-on-topic, totom's mashup of that cover with NIN's With Teeth (the song) is pretty awesome.

The Melvins are arguably the masters of doing covers that are equal to and often better than the originals. Them and Mike Patton, and various combinations thereof.

I'm rather fond of these ABBA covers:

Swedish symphonic death metal band Therion covering 'Summernight City': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPqVFfT4Kck

German power metal band At Vance covering 'Money Money Money': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY9HclhwB-8
At Vance covering 'The Winner Takes it All': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLsQW...eature=related
At Vance covering 'S.O.S': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioly7...eature=related

Others -
At Vance covering 'The Logical Song' by Supertramp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKuwa...eature=related
Rush covering 'Summertime Blues': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6APF...eature=related

Dream Theater did entire covers of Metallica's 'Master of Puppets' album and Iron Maiden's 'The Number of the Beast' album that are pretty killer.
DT: 'Master of Puppets': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O4HOMPD-1E
DT: 'Hallowed Be Thy Name': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVMoY...eature=related
DT covering 'Highway Star' by Deep Purple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmFvF...eature=related

Those At Vance ABBA covers a great, but this just rules.

I've heard this version before and it does, indeed, rule. I can only take Yngwie's style for soooo long, though.

Eddie Vedder has always been respectful to the material he's covered, but for me this takes the cake. He and My Morning Jacket doing The Who's "A Quick One" live:
Part One
Part Two

Agreed.

Lame song: Unbelievable by EMF
Made great by: Killdozer

Great song: Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
Made terrible by: Counting Crows

What? I love The Animals, their version is my favorite.

Cover Freak is excellent. There's another one coverlaydown.blogspot.com that posts some great folk covers.

And I must give a shout out to coveringthemouse.com, which turned me on to one of the all time greatest covers ever, Susuki and the Sunesmith's version of "Part of Your World." It's like a Japanese Ben Folds meets the Cheers theme covering the Little Mermaid. I understand how that might not be your thing, but it's great.

I'm a cover song whore (over 300 on my ipod), so I'll post more later with some of my favorites.

Apologies. I read that you thought their version was not as good as the covers.

Oh, and most unlikely cover that still turns out to be awesome is Vanilla Fudge's seven minute organ laden version of "I Want It That Way."

I liked k.d. lang better before she got all Vegas-slick, but she can still tear the living shit out of "Cryin'".

"Top of the World", Shonen Knife

"Stairway to Heaven", Rodrigo y Gabriela

It doesn't do anything particularly new with it, but I still dig Built To Spill's take on Cortez The Killer.

Real Love - Mike Doughty
I Wanna Dance With Somebody - David Byrne

Hotel California made great by The Gypsy Kings. Made phenomenal by the Jesus reveal in Lebowski.

Sorry man but it's a total mockery. There's one thing in making a song you're own and something that's just plain terrible. I love me some Jon Brion, but APC's studio version of Nurse is fucking horrible. It's not even an APC song. It's, let's try to do something totally different and radical while not maintaining our own sound. I'm the kind of guy who listens to entire albums, never skipping a song, but in the case of Thirteenth Step I never listen to song #9. APC actually play it pretty good live because it's a hybrid of Failure and their own sound. To say it's better then Failure's original is absolutely ridiculous.

Always liked Wilson Picket's version of "Hey Jude" and Aretha Franklin's take on "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

The King had a good take on "Never Been To Spain".

Janis Joplin did a pretty mean "Me & Bobbi McGee".

Korn's version of Word Up by Kameo is so terrible it inspired me to join a movie messageboard I had been lurking at just to bitch about it. This was 4 years ago.

I'm a sucker for covers. And two I can think off the top of my head

"Stripped" - Shinny Toy Guns
"Hurdy Gurdy Man" - Butthole Surfers

oh and "Viva Las Vegas" - X

The Deftones covering Sade's No Ordinary Love. More bizarre because of how similar Chino sounds to Sade sound than anything else, though I do kinda dig the vocal layering in the cover a bit more. Still....fucking bizarre.

You know, every time I hear somebody say that they prefer the cover to the original version of just about anything, I pretty much assume that they heard the cover first. 95% of the time, it turns out I was right.

I appreciate/recognize their talent, but I've never been much of a U2 fan. Regardless, for some reason all the hairs on my neck stood at attention when Frusciante played a snippet of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" when I saw RHCP in Atlanta in 2006. There's video of the same performance here, but the audio sucks. Man, I really love that John Frusciante. Some of his solo stuff is seriously underloved, in my opinion.

Aretha Franklin's female perspective spin on Otis Redding's "Respect" is deservedly classic, of course. I'm sure her version is more well known than his these days, but Redding's original is fantastic.

I second Raspberry Leper's praise for Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam's cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War". Their version is just amazing. Speaking of Pearl Jam, I once heard a bootleg of them doing Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People" live and it was utterly atrocious. The few times I've heard Eddie go out on a funky limb, he's failed miserably. Big Head Todd and the Monsters, though, do excellent covers of "Everyday People" and Led Zeppelin's "Tangerine".

As much as I love The Beatles and the original song, I have to agree that Fiona Apple's rendition of "Across the Universe" is simply awesome. Just as she is doing Elvis Costello's "I Want You". <--Don't even THINK of not clicking on that link. She's so fuckin' great.

I'm a huge Parliament-Funkadelic fan (I've probably stated as much a hundred times here) and enjoy the covers of "I Want You" (The Beatles) and "California Dreaming" (The Mamas & the Papas) Eddie Hazel did on one of his solo albums.

Oh, and I love Smashing Pumpkins' cover of "Landslide" and Jane's Addiction's cover of "Sympathy for the Devil".

There's a great cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday by Saul Williams. What sucks is that I can't get the damn song on Itunes. Album only my ass.

John Frusciante, musically, can do no wrong in my eyes, so take this with that in mind, but I saw him solo about 5 years ago and he did ripping versions of Bowie's "Modern Love", Del Shannons "Runaway", and Ritchie Haven's "Freedom". I've also seen a clip where he covered "How Deep Is Your Love" (Yes, the Bee Gees) at a Chili Pepper's concert, and it was awesome.

On the Pearl Jam tip, I prefer their "Crazy Mary", "I Believe In Miracles", and "Driven To Tears" to the originals (Victoria Williams, The Ramones, and The Police, respectively).

Dead Kennedys, maybe? I don't think X ever did that one. As for covers, X did "Soul Kitchen" and "Crystal Ship" (Doors), "All or Nothing" (Small Faces), "Breathless" (Jerry Lee Lewis), "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" (Leadbelly), "So Long" (Woody Guthrie), and, atrociously, "Wild Thing" (Troggs). There are a few others on the various reissues, but, of the whole bunch, only "Soul Kitchen," "Breathless", and maybe "Dancing with Tears..." are among their best work.

The Husker Du version of "Eight Miles High" is the ideal cover - a great song totally redefined simply by the band playing it in its own signature style. It's entirely faithful in some surprising ways (it took me years to recognize the lightning fast solo at the beginning as simply a sped-up version of the original lead line), yet so different that it doesn't even make sense to say that it's better or worse than the Byrds' original.