DMBfanLongliveStrongBad! said:
All Along the Watchtower, although it was originally Bob Dylan's song, Jimi Hendrix and Dave Matthews Band do the song more than justice.
There was a local band that I heard on the radio once that I thought did a great job of covering it, but I only heard it once and even though I know the name of the band (Chrome Yellow), I didn't have the money to get the CD and unfortunately that song wasn't available to even sample from their website. For all I know it might not've been all that great, but I seem to remember otherwise.
Western Deity said:
I was always under the impression that the Beatles performed "Eleanor Rigby" first?
Well, Lennon and McCartney wrote the song, so I think it's safe to assume the Beatles recorded it first, even if only as a demo. I looked it up on allmusic, and it says that Ray Charles version appeared on a 1963 EP, and that the Beatles version was on 1966's
Revolver, but since the songwriting is still Lennon/McCartney, it's tricky.
Songs from that era often were recorded by multiple artists in a very short span of time and it can be hard to know just who recorded it first, even if you know who wrote it. The most famous version of "Unchained Melody" (I would assume the most famous version is by The Righteous Brothers) is a cover, for example, and was recorded about nine or ten years after a version my grandparents have. It's the same way with "The Mighty Quinn"...originally written and recorded as a demo by Bob Dylan, but covered and released by Manfred Mann before Dylan put it out on an album. The Manfred Mann version is still probably the most well-known version of the song.
I can recall one newer cover that did better than the original: Faith Hill's "Cry" - originally recorded by Angie Aparo, and appears on
his 2000 album
The American. I like both versions, actually, and if it weren't for the fact I passed up buying
The American when it came out, I would've known straight out of the box that Faith Hill covered it, but I didn't know until about six months later.
NINGirl said:
What also is sad is when an artist becomes famous because of a cover being their hit. Joss Stone is a strong example of this. She covered White Stripe's "Fell in love with Girl" and changed all the pronouns to "boy" and was on VH1's Diva Special.
Yeah, I can't stand that version. It probably has more to do with the fact that I can't stand the way she sings, though.
And Happy Birthday!
Personally, I tend to like most covers I hear; IMO, it brings out a different dimension to the song (yes, even the dumb dance covers; they're fun, at least most of the time). There are some that I absolutely can't tolerate, but I usually don't listen to the stations that play those versions.
I do get kind of miffed when someone else is raving over the cover and thinks it's the original. And then I have to go and point out it's not (and in most cases I have the original, so I bring that out and play it for them). It's not all that bad if the original was fairly obscure, but when it's a well-known song it gets on my nerves.
The most ridiculous cover/remix/whatever-you-wanna-call-it that I've run across was the deal with the song "Damaged" by Plumb. Recorded in 1999, appeared both the band's album and on the Brokedown Palace soundtrack, and then the Plum
met version comes out four years later, but it sounds like the exact same voice! Not to mention that while the rest of Plummet's songs may or may not be covers, it's still the same voice. Either there's some collaboration (and cheap naming conventions) going on, the singer's voice is just eerily similar (which is what allmusic seems to imply), or I smell a lawsuit brewing (or already brewed, at any rate; I wasn't too up on it back in 2001)...
Needless to say, I like the Plumb version
much better, but the Plummet cover is decent.
NINGirl said:
Sign Of The Fish said:
i thoroughly enjoyed Johny Cash's cover of NIN's "hurt".
Wow, guess that's in the eye of the beholder then. (Or ear of the beholder?) Most definetly enjoy the original and can't stand Cash's version.
You should hear the cover of "Head Like A Hole" that Devo (you know, "Whip It") did. Truly bizarre. They kept the music fairly close, too. The vocals are just off-the-wall, though.
Don't get me wrong, there are some I like, but it's fairly repetitive now hearing 16 year old girls going 'oh I like this song' and having to tell them that it's actually a remix from the 80s!!!
I never really noticed that U2 had been sampled in that song when I saw the music video title pop up one day on MTV. Any rock classic that has been turned into a dance track remix is akin to treason I think!! Rock covers (eg. rock bands covering the classic rock anthems of the past) are usually good, but when pop starlets and the like take those and try and make them their own, it rarely works, although I'd be keen to hear viewpoints on those whom members think did work 
