Play It Again, Sam! Covers, Remixes, and Other Musical Do-Overs

+1

Most of his covers are great - "Stop Breaking Down" is better than even the Stones' version - but "Jolene" takes the cake.

 

Dwight Yoakam has a million great covers - "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke," "Suspicious Minds," "I Want You to Want Me," "Purple Rain," "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide." There is an endless supply.

Someone noted Dylan covers. Other than "All Along the Watchtower," none is better than the Byrds' "My Back Pages."

And then there's Petty covering the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better."

This was in concert, but appropriate for today, I saw Mellencamp open a show a few days after 9/11 with "Gimme Shelter," which was pretty powerful.

 

Rich subject - starting with Nirvana (at work, too busy to paste the videos).

Patti Smith turned "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into a tango ballad - and pulls it off, complete with scatting on the instrumental break.

And Lord, the gospel-like Polyphonic Spree version of "Lithium"...

 

Speaking of Dwight Yoakam.

And Elvis did a version as a medley with a Get Back cover.

 

Yoakam also did a great cover of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". And his version of "Suspicious Minds" is as good an Elvis cover as anyone has done.

 

This is as good a version of Sweet Child O' Mine as there is:

 

GNR did a pretty solid cover of the Who's "The Seeker" on their stadium tour last summer.

And it's become cliche, but Jeff Buckley's cover of "Hallelujah" is up there with the original.

 

If you're into 90s alt rock / grunge, Local H has a whole (bootleg) CD of covers floating around out there. Covers of "Don't Do Me Like That," "Wolf Like Me," "25 or 6 to 4," bunch of others. They also traditionally do only Nirvana songs for their Halloween concerts, and there are recordings of that floating out there too. (It's mostly just like listening to Nirvana though, since they're in similar genres already.)

 

Joe Bonamassa and Beth Hart did an album of covers and it's incredible. A few selections:

 

I prefer Buffett's "Southern Cross" to the original.