Best Cover Songs

Fortune Teller - Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

Patricia Barber - Ode to Billy Joe

+1 for Patricia

I believe 'InchWorm' is on that album, too.

Come to think of it, Linda Ronstadt has had a few, too.

Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now

A bit of a strange one here but Tom Waits covering Heigh Ho from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Redefines the song for me.

Bruce Hornsby's cover of Grateful Dead's Jack Straw.

Grateful Dead's cover of Jimmy Reed's Big Boss Man and Woody Guthrie's Goin Down the Road Feeling Bad

Love the Dead Souls cover from NIN..... awesome, and I love Joy Division

Other covers - Ziggy Stardust by Bauhaus, The Passenger by Siouxie, and a punk favorite - 99 Red Balloons by 7 Seconds

Last one would be Tears of a Clown by The English Beat - great cover of an old Smoky Robinson and the Miracles song!

The Bangles... Hazy Shade of Winter originally by S&G.

Eric Clapton doing his own cover of Layla on MTV Unplugged

...and for the King of Covers...

Easy Star All-Stars - Dark Side of the Moon, the entire album in Raggae... Excellent intrepretation.

-Michael

Great thread!

Let's see...how about;

- The Scientist, by Johnette Napolitano and Danny Lohner. You can feel the steel strings on the guitar...

-Over the Rainbow, by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

-Comfortably Numb, by Dar Williams

-Superstar, by Sonic Youth (making the Carpenters' song creepy...)

-and

-Any early Zepellin !!

I forgot about Mettalica's cover of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy". Already a fast hard sound, but great when taken to thrash tempo.

Sheesh, I cannot believe I didn't think of this before!

You guessed it, another Dylan cover. Antony doing "I was young when I left home".

Mesmerizing...

Jennifer Warnes' Bird on a Wire - Leonard Cohen (plus a few more):

spanish harlem - rebecca pidgeon

Respect - Aretha Franklin

One of the best if not THE BEST cover of all time.

Esau

Bettye LaVette - Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook

Luka Bloom - Dancing Queen

Shawn Colvin - Every Little Thing (He) Does Is Magic

Shawn Colvin - This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)

Marianne Faithfull - Something Tells Me I'm Into Something Good

For something off the wall how about My Way by Sid Vicious! (not saying it's great at all, just a hoot, always makes me laugh!)

Bruce Hornsby's cover of Grateful Dead's Jack Straw.

 

Grateful Dead's cover of Jimmy Reed's Big Boss Man and Woody Guthrie's Goin Down the Road Feeling Bad

Burning Spear's cover of Estimated Prophet

Lennon doing pretty much anything - Stand By Me for starters. And is there another singer anywhere who could compete favorably with the Smokey Robinson original of You Really Got A Hold On Me? Money? Twist And Shout?

+1

But, not just Lennon, the Beatles in general - their covers were often better than the originals. McCartney doing Long Tall Sally, George singing Everybody's Trying to be my Baby, and others.

From the same era - The Byrds singing Dylan.

Derek and the Dominos - Little Wing. THE version of the song, IMO.

William Shatner doing Hey Mister Tamborine Man and Rolf Harris doing Stairway to Heaven.

And on a more serious note: I love the recent "The Golden Age of Song" from Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra with "guest" vocalists.

And somewhere in between Erasure doing Abba back in the late 80s / early 90s.

Eloise

Sid Vicious - My Way

Devo - Satisfaction

Overall, I'd say not many do covers better than Bryan Ferry

PS. And are we talking about covers or reinterpretations...

Overall, I'd say not many do covers better than Bryan Ferry

I couldn't agree more!

I never thought that I would voluntarily listen to Brothers in Arms again. Although I never really liked the song or the album, it has been in such heavy rotation that I haven't been able to avoid it. Moreover, it seems to impersonate a very unlikeable aspect of hifi--the constant rotation of a limited set of audiophile recordings. So you can safely say that I'm fed up with BIA. To put it mildly.

But the other day I heard it

It was Peter Lyngdorf of who made me aware of Baez's interpretation. It happened at a Steinway Lyngdorf demo. Although I wasn't won over by the SL system*, it was a very pleasant evening. Peter Lyngdorf is very good company, and he clearly has a passion for music, the conversation often strayed into music discussions. In fact, when we were approaching the end of the demo, Peter said would have liked to continue playing more music to us, but that he wanted to stop out of the consideration for the staff in the store, who had to close up. And still he played music for another 40 minutes :-D Nice to meet a high end manufacturer and learn that he is clearly passionate about music.

*It should be said that conditions weren't ideal. The room was full of other speakers and lots of hard surfaces.

Tom Waits: Somewhere, from West Side Story. (I think it was on Blue Valentine)

Chick Corea and Hiromi: Fool on the Hill (The whole album is incredible)

Sonic Youth: Superstar (needs to be said again)

Nico: These Days (Jackson Browne wrote and recorded it first, and it became much more popular later in his career)

James Blake: Case of You

on Jeff Buckley's live at Sin-e, he does great covers of Van Morrison's The way young lovers do, and Sweet Thing

Does anyone remember the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert when Sting and Jeff Beck did People get Ready? It was one of the few times I wasn't angry with them.

I have to add Ryan Adams cover of Wonderwall. Not only a great cover that in my opinion surpasses the original but the sonics are excellent.

Gillian Welch's cover of Blackstar by Radiohead