And I’m not saying that the original is bad. You have to have a good song to have a good cover in my opinion. But sometimes the cover artist just understands the mission and takes what the original song did and expands on that a hundred times over.
What’re some of your guys’s favorites?
Zebrahead did a cover of Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne.
It’s an amazing music clip too.
Nirvana’s version of The Man Who Sold the World.
This is one of my favorite songs of all time, and I quite liked the original even.
The Donnie Darko (slowed down version) of Tears for Fears, Mad World.
Great choice. That was done by Gary Jules, btw.
Both versions are good, but I still prefer the original. I love sad songs that sound happy.
Also it’s funny how everyone including myself initially thinks that the original is the cover.
I love sad songs that sound happy.
OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” has entered the chat.
This is almost the gold standard for me, when this question comes up
A Perfect Circle’s version of Imagine by John Lennon is my favorite cover song. They add so much groove, atmosphere and melancholy to the song. It’s beautiful.
The Lovemongers version of Battle of Evermore catches me the right way sometimes. I prefer the original, but their version is excellent as well
Tori Amos has an amazing cover album but her rendition of the Eminem song ’97 Bonnie & Clyde is honestly horrifying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4-bXS5LJGM
Also her cover of the Boom town rats I don’t like mondays is my favorite version of that song.
This is the opposite of what you’re asking for, sorry, but I find that more people are familiar with the A Perfect Circle version of The Nurse Who Loved Me than they are with the original version by Failure.
Both very good versions song, but the original still blows me away.
Apologies for doing the opposite of what you asked, but this was just the first thing that came to mind.
This was one of the first that came to my mind as well. It wasn’t till a couple years ago that I learned it was a cover, and I really can’t decide whether I prefer APC’s or Failure’s version.
There is a live recording of Thirteenth Step, where they play it much closer to the original, and it’s the absolute best of both worlds IMO.
A weird one:
“Sludgefest”, an old Alvin and the chipmunks pop record slowed back down to the speed the vocals were recorded.
The result is unironically good – a grimy, moody sound, with deep growling guitar.
This is fucking awesome. Thank you for sharing!!
This is absolutely awesome, thanks for the introduction to it.
i also enjoyed this
The Disturbed cover of Land of Confusion
Yea, that song+video might be the origin of the phrase “goes hard”.
Or Disturbed’s cover of Sound of Silence
I grew up listening to the original and I still like it very much, but that cover is one of the greatest songs I’ve ever listened to
Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you”. I love Dolly Parton but Whitney slayed this song.
I think this is the main one. That song (as performed by Whitney) is absolutely iconic and absolutely transcendental. The Dolly version is good, but if it weren’t for Whitney it would be just another Dolly Parton song.
Her style is a super stripped-down one with almost all instrumentation just being her voice through a vocoder. This cover includes a bit more traditional instrumentation than usual for her work, but it’s still quite stark next to the original. It comes across as very pensive, which I think works nicely with the lyrics
Alabama 3’s (A3 in some places) cover of John Prine’s “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness”. This is the song before “Woke up this Morning” on the album “Exile on Cold Harbour Lane”, and the two together tell a story.
Probably my favourite album of all time.