Best Covers
A lawyer listserve I'm on distracted itself from political bickering with the question of what are the best covers ever done. Here's what I came up with. Anybody care to add, subtract, or multiply?
1. Elvis Costello - "My Funny Valentine". Classic song, best version ever.
2. Sinead O'Connor - "Nothing Compares 2 U", covering Prince. That voice is haunting.
3. Cake, "I Will Survive", covering Gloria Gaynor. Irresistible.
4. Cracker, "Rainy Days and Mondays", covering the Carpenters. Turns out, if you add an edge to their sound, the Carpenters had some first class material. I have an album made up entirely of Carpenters covers.
5. Indigo Girls, "Tangled Up in Blue". Perhaps my favorite Dylan song, brilliantly done.
6. Willie Nelson, "Georgia On My Mind", covering Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell. Off the album "Stardust". If this album doesn't get your partner feeling romantic, you might as well go fishing.
7. Bruce Springsteen, "Jersey Girl", covering Tom Waits.
8. Warren Zevon, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", covering Bob Dylan. This comes off a haunting album released after he knew he was dying.
9. Beatles, "Rock and Roll Music", covering Chuck Berry. I'm not a huge Beatles fan, but I had to sneak Chuck Berry in here somehow . . .
10. Hendrix, "All Along the Watchtower", covering Dylan. All Hendrix needed was a starting point . . .
BTW, this list was helped along by The Covers Project, an ambitious project to build a "six degrees of separation" chain for music.
posted by Dan at 9/13/2005 06:52:00 AM
7 Comments:
I love Allison Krauss' cover of Todd Rundgren's "It wouldn't have made any difference."
YOu should post this in the comments over at Tangled Up In Blue.
Somebody did a post on favorite covers just recently. Covering up..
I think Johnny Cash's cover of NIN's "Hurt" is incredible, as is his version of the Beatles "In My Life."
One of my favorites is Joe Cocker's cover of the Dave Mason song, "Feelin' Alright". The live version on the Mad Dogs & Englishman album (er, excuse me - "CD" for all of you youngsters) is amazing.
Also, Jimi Hendrix' "Little Wing" was covered well by both Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
I want to second Alison Krauss' cover of "It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference." Stunning...
My Funny Valentine, really? No knocking Costello, but do jazz standards really qualify as 'covers', since everyone and their reality TV co-star have performed them?
I've long been a fan of cross-genre covers -- Big Daddy covered Sgt. Peppers in its entirety as though performed by 50s stars like Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper...
For best of all time, though? I have to nominate The Gourds' bluegrass cover of Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice, Jonathan Coulton's cover of Baby Got Back and anything by Richard Cheese.
Humble Pie doing "Honky Tonk Woman"....outstanding.
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