In honor of the pending blog post about the development of the cover art for Angel Falls, let’s talk covers!
I’m a cover-lover. I’d bet you are too.My only rules, if I were to have any, is that the song must take the original and make it different. It doesn’t even have to be better, just different. I want whoever is singing to own that song. And I don’t mean the annoying “hey we’re doing rap to bluegrass” kind of cover, or the “we’re hipsters who slow hard rock songs down and sing melancholy harmonies on guitar” kind… although there’s a few of those I like too. I like to hear a song I’ve heard hundreds of times before done in such a way that I have to pause just so my brain can wrap around the new sound.
Here’s a few of my recent favorites.
Butch Walker and the Black Widows cover Nirvana’s In Bloom.
Tori Amos covers Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence
Queens of the Stone Age cover Billy Idol’s White Wedding
Lord Sitar covers The Who’s Miles and Miles
Do you know what a gayageum is? You’ve never heard one played this way before.
Luna Lee covers Jimi Hendrix’s Voodo Chile
Saving the best for last:
Daniel Mustard covers Radiohead’s Creep (the honest pain in this one KILLS me every time)
Artwork to come later in the week. in the meantime, what are some of your favorite covers?
That gayageum is rad. My favorite covers are Concrete Blonde’s “Everybody Knows” (Leonard Cohen) and maybe Tori’s “Thank You” (Zeppelin). Actually, I like lots of Cohen covers, much the same way I prefer others’ versions of Bob Dylan tunes.