I have a tribute album of a bunch of artists covering Elton John songs. Most of them just ape the original (horribly), but there are a few who go in a new direction and just completely change the song. Two of them:
Eric Clapton turns “Border Song” into kind of a jazz riff:
Sinead O’Connor turns “Sacrifice” into kind of a sad lullabye:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGOvB2aSno4
Sinead O’Connor has a real talent for great covers. “Nothing Compares 2 U”, obviously, but she also covered Nirvana’s “All Apologies” on the album Universal Mother - great, great cover, reducing the song to a simple acoustic guitar and O’Connor’s phenomenal voice.
Just listened to this on Youtube - wow, you are right. That’s a great version. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard it before.
Devo’s great cover of “Satisfaction” has already been mentioned. I love it.
I love their deconstruction/cover of “Secret Agent Man” even more.
This might be cheating, buy my wife just recorded an A Capella cover of Tap Tap’s “Half Moon Street” that I think is frickin’ awesome.
I really like Five Finger Death Punch’s cover of Bad Company. I just discovered this band on Pandora recently and am quite liking them (metal band).
Nobody has mentioned the greatest cover band that ever lived yet; the Grateful Dead. Talk about taking a song and making it your own.
Because I have been listening to it recently I can lead you directly to a quality audience taped version of Otis Redding’s Hard to Handle from a live 1971 show at the Hollywood Palladium. There is an embedded MP3 player on the page, it is track 8 and it is awesome.
This is one of my favourites. Great Big Sea covering Gallows Pole. Particularly impressive considering the singer had a throat infection at the time:
Holy crap, that was awesome. Song worth buying purely on their actions in the youtube video alone but it doesn’t hurt that its a kick ass version of that song.
In the QT3 tradition of resurrecting long dormant threads…
My wife was singing karaoke with my 4 year old daughter and “Somewhere over the Rainbow” was on the list. That got me to remembering one of my favourite covers of the song. Toby Swann, the frontman for Toronto punk band The Battered Wives recorded a solo album “Lullabyes in Razorland” that included his cover of the song. It enjoyed some airplay on CFNY.
I love Sturgill Simpson’s covers of The Promise:
and In Bloom.
I’m a fan of when a band takes a cover and makes it their own. So when I saw a link to Ween covering Prince’s Purple Rain, I assumed they would turn it into Brown Rain. But they played it straight and, damn, it’s good.
Bryan Ferry’s first two solo albums were textbooks on how to do a rock cover right - keeping it recognizable but adding enough of a “twist” to make it your own. Some (me) would argue his version of Sympathy for the Devil is considerably better than the Stones original.
And this is just plain hilarious
This is a not-so-drastic-remake cover of Waiting for a Star to Fall, by Lionville.
Ghost does a phenomenal cover of Roky Erickson’s “If You Have Ghosts”.
Some folks prefer Ghost’s fully-produced EP version, however I am most fond of the acoustic version they did in the live hardDrive Radio studio. Note: If you are observant, you’ll notice they have the left and right audio channels reversed here. Another great acoustic version was done in Paris. Papa’s vocals are excellent in both live versions.
They took Erickson’s original, changed it pretty radically, and made it their own. Ghost has done a lot of great covers, but this is my favorite, and slots in perfectly with their catalog.
For comparison, here is Roky Erickson’s original version.
Cover Where I Prefer the Cover
Number 1
I really like Sailin’ Shoes by Little Feat. I am kind of a Little Feat freak, you could say.
But I prefer a version done by Robert Palmer below off his first Album. It was produced by Lowell George (of Little Feat) and the band on the album was The Meters, a seminal New Orleans funk act. Sailin’ Shoes is the first of a three song medley that basically encompass the first track on the album. Really fantastic, silky funk.
That’s awesome, I’m a big fan of Little Feat myself. Even the later, crappier Lowell-less version.
When driving, every album from the first up to and including Feats Don’t Fail Me Now is on constant rotation for weeks on end.