Top Ten Best Song Covers (You May Not Have Heard)

Covers. It's the easiest way to get your friends and friends of friends to come see your band. Promise an awesome Led cover and suddenly everyone appears hammered screaming "STAIRWAY!"

But some credence should be given to the artists who take a well-known song and cover it until it's a new entity entirely.

And so I give you the top ten best song covers (you may not have heard).


10. Dead Kennedys; Viva Las Vegas

I'm not sure that there's much I can write about this cover. It's a song EVERYBODY knows and, some how, DK turned it from a song of love to Las Vegas into an anthem of the crazy shit you can get into. Leave it to a punk band to make me want to go to Vegas.




9. Newton Faulkner; Teardrops

I love Massive Attack's song Teardrop secretly (until now). Fuck House, it's a good song. One night at work I put it on and my coworker Britt said "You need to hear this guy cover it with guitar slaps". Whatever to my ears. Then I watched it. I can fathom how he's keeping his tone. It's beautiful. I wish this guy and I could go to Bonnaroo together and find an empty bathroom stall.




8. Rasputina; Wish You Were Here

The first song any musician learns in and out on their guitar is Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. It's simple, it's resonate and it's beautiful. But I have never heard another band take it in such a different direction than Rasputina. Their transposition of the solo to acoustic cello, the opening lines, it's almost a completely different take on the song and it's just lovely.




7. Machine Head; Message in a Bottle

Do I know machine head well? No. Do I know The Police well. A road trip to and from Atlanta, yes I do. This is a nice turn on the song. It takes a song that's hard to play for people who don't know that The Police beget Sting and opens it up to the masses. A song about love with a hard rock twist needs to be given at least one listen.




6. Aurora; Ordinary World

I'd bet money you've heard this before but have never been able to place it. Ordinary World came off Duran Duran's album Duran Duran (The Wedding Album) along with Come Undone (along with a slew of other sort of sad songs from the band that gave you Hungry Like the Wolf). I'll admit, I have trouble listening to Duran Duran's 80'd pop rock but Aurora's cover of Ordinary World is one part pop rock and one part the emotion that was going into the original album.




5. Apocalyptica; Nothing Else Matters

Metal Heads may not love this cover (though my theory remains that a true music loving metal head will) but with all my vitriol with Metallica following their infamous "NO ONE WILL HAVE OUR MUSIC FOR FREE" hypocrisy I love this cello centric cover. It cuts right back to the lost and empty feeling present in Nothing Else Matters and is technically astounding.




4. Matt Weddle; Hey Ya

If you grew up in the '00's then you heard Hey Ya by Andre' 3000 of Outkast a million goddamn times. We all know the song. We all know the history. We've all heard somebody jamming out alone to it while they wash dishes. But Matt Weddle's cover is a completely different take and even made me (cynical as I am) stop and think about the lyrics (to HEY YA). It's folkish and fasicnating.




3. The Flaming Lips, Stardeath, White Dwarfs and Henry Rollins; Dark Side of the Moon

I'm not a huge fan of The Flaming Lips nor am I a fan of Dark Side of the Moon covers. I worked in a record store for a year so I've just about had my fill of "Dark Side REGGAE" "Dark Side PUNK". And The Flaming Lips just never did it for me. Another one of those bands I like one or two songs but the rest... meh. But I LOVE Henry Rollins SO I had to play this album if for, nothing else, to hear how he contributed. And I was amazed. So many Dark Side covers are the EXACT album with a little flavor thrown in. This album took the work, twisted it, expanded upon it and created something that not only gave a nod to the original album but created something dynamic and fascinating.




2. Christopher Walken; Poker Face

Ok, he's not a band. But he's Christopher Walken. FIN.




1. Rasputina; Barracuda

I Love Rasputina. I'm biased because I'm a trained cellist who loves women centric bands that don't revel in "Your lover left you and you're angry SUPER CHORD SCREAM PROCESSION". Rasputina run the gamut in their albums cycling from blues to "goth rock" to classical but it's their covers that cement them in the hearts of the listeners who don't have my particular biases. I already mentioned them once in this list, but this cover takes the cake if in nothing else that no one who ever hears it for the first time realizes that it is ONLY cellos and a drummer.



There are of course many other brilliant covers, but my attention span is only so long these days.