132 thoughts on “Cover Songs Better than “Africa””

      1. Gosh I love that version too! Just a good song no matter what.

        I listened to all three in a row and my daughter was like “that is the longest song i ever heard”Report

  2. Whoa whoa whoa. If we’re going with a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America,” it’s gotta be the Yes rendition.

    Other great candidates are the Who’s “Eyesight to the Blind” and Faith Hill’s “Piece of My Heart.”Report

    1. I sadly must admit the Yes version is not my cup of prog.

      And I don’t really love the others as well as the originals either – but they’re definitely valid remakes. (I will be seeing Faith Hill’s lacy blouse and blazer combo in my nightmares for some time)

      All of them are WAY better than “Africa”.Report

  4. First Aid Kit’s “America” reminds me of the S&G version from the Concert in Central Park. Are you familiar with it?Report

    1. I agree with this. Chip beat me to it, but this song is the one I always go to when a “covers” conversation comes up. My personal favorite is still Dolly singing it live to Porter Wagner, who she wrote it for, which has an emotional edge to it that isn’t describable but is obvious. This is a good write up on it, including Dolly talking about almost wrecking her car hearing Whitney’s version the first time. https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/12/26/dolly-parton-remembers-writing-always-love-you/77762172/Report

          2. Why not? From Wikipedia: “Linda Ronstadt’s great-grandfather, graduate engineer Friedrich August Ronstadt (who went by Federico Augusto Ronstadt) immigrated to the Southwest (then a part of Mexico) in the 1840s from Hanover, Germany, and married a Mexican citizen, eventually settling in Tucson.”Report

    2. Beautiful. I love Linda Ronstadt.

      I hesitate to share this prematurely since I’m working on a sequel to this piece involving cross-gender covers, but this is my favorite Linda Ronstadt cover (well, technically The Stone Poneys):

      https://youtu.be/w9qsDgA1q8Y

      Sorry I don’t know how to post the youtube clip right, apparently.Report

      1. A remarkable thing is that when you go through the list of her hits just how many of them were covers. Blue Bayou? Roy Orbison. You’re No Good? Dee Dee Warwick. When Will I Be Loved? Everly Brothers. Tracks of My Tears? The Miracles. Desperado? The Eagles. Poor, Poor Pitiful Me? Warren Zevon. That’ll Be the Day? Buddy Holly. Love Is a Rose? Recorded but not released by Neil Young.Report

          1. Yeah… I was thinking about this too. How many singer-songwriters are there? (As a percentage of the artists you hear on the radio, I mean.)

            If you sing something written by someone else, does that make you a cover singer? There are song writers, after all, who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket who make their livings writing for others.

            We don’t hold it against the people for whom they write. (Heck, we don’t hold it against the people who end up singing the songs even if the song writer wrote it at a piano and put it out there for someone, anyone, to sing.)Report

          2. I have no idea. Ronstadt emerged from the Laurel Canyon/West Hollywood thing in the late-60s to mid-70s, which was full of both songwriters and singer-songwriters. I guess I would have expected that as she got famous, she would have gotten first crack at more new (never commercially recorded) material that the writer thought “This is a Linda Ronstadt song.”Report

            1. IMO, the rise of the singer/songwriter in the late 60s is due in large part to Dylan popularizing the concept, as well as the identification of pop music with its generation.

              Up until then, it was just assumed the writer and performer would be different.

              But it seems like starting with the rise of the boomer/ hippy/ youth culture in the 60s, audiences expected the performers to embody their music. So it was a big scandal when it turned out the Monkees didn’t play their own instruments.Report

            2. Totally off-topic, but if you are ever looking for reading material, check out “Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream” by David McGowan. It is a bit mind-blowing, if you enjoy crazy conspiracy theories that make you go hmm.Report

  8. Liz Phair’s cover of Turning Japanese is very good.

    What I think we can all agree on is that random street musicians trying to do 100 percent imitations of Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah need to be muted.Report

  10. Otis Redding’s cover of “Respect” by Aretha Franklin.

    Wait a minute! Strike that, reverse it. Thank you. The original was really good though.Report

    1. I always liked that one too, Oscar. I remember it was one of the first songs I taped off the radio. Strangely enough, the same tape I recorded “Africa” on.

      As a child I remember feeling worried that a very mean girl had left poor Phil in the rain for hours. But, you can’t hurry love.Report

  13. Kristen thanks this is a great column. Can’t write much now but just shared this with my husband and we can’t really define it it but there is a difference between a rendition of a song and a successful cover of a song.Report

  14. My lest favorite cover: Romeo and Juliet (Dire Straits) by the Indigo Girls. One of the greatest things abut the original is the progression of emotions: anger, sadness, resignation, and finally hope. Gone completely in favor of making it “rawer”.Report

      2. I prefer the original, but maybe that’s part of the point of a cover. I’ve definitely connected more emotionally with some cover songs than some original versions just because of the inexplicable magic element…something I just couldn’t put my finger on.Report

  15. One of my factories artists
    Richard Thompson has an album of covers called A Thousand Years of Pop Music. He goes all the way back to the Middle Ages but also covers more contemporary music like Oops I Did It Again and 1985. It’s a skilled riot.Report

  16. Cover songs are kind of funny as a general thing – it’s a category we only recently even thought of. Go see a symphony or a jazz band, how many of the pieces they pay were composed by one of the performers? Zero is a pretty safe bet…

    Anyway, there are some great ones in this post – Cash’s cover of Hurt is the one I immediately thought of on reading the title. Morrissette’s cover of My Humps is awesome. Footnote to that – Fergie loved it and sent Alanis a cake in the shape of a bum to thank her.

    I like both Michael Buble’s and the Ramones’ covers of the Spiderman theme song. It helps that I watched that cartoon a lot growing up.

    I don’t know if you’d call Loreena McKennit’s Mask and Mirror am album of “covers” exactly, but it’s full of great adaptations of much older songs and poems.

    Matt Mulholland’s cover of Rebecca Black’s Friday is pure gold. Say what you will of the song, it inspired some fun covers. https://youtu.be/hxleH60hDJY

    And if for no reason other than the amazing video, Andy Rehfeldt’s black metal cover of The Good Ship Lollipop https://youtu.be/q5RJVQEQaIUReport

    1. Glad you brought this point up. Cover songs only make sense as a concept when we strictly correlate song, song writer, and performer together. Before rock, the idea that a particular song belonged to a particular artist and everybody else was copying it would be ludicrous. Music was popular because everybody sung it. According to musical history Elijah Wald, if you went into a record song before rock, the shop workers would assume any good recording of a song would do.Report

    2. The cover of Friday is insanely good! That is CRAZY! The existential angst of “what seat should I take”…

      Lollipop is awesome and disturbing in all the right ways.

      Thank you!!!Report

  17. I am a huge fan of cover songs. I agree with your fourth point that if you’re going to do a note-for-note recreation of a song, you should choose a fairly obscure one.

    I think that Gnarles Barkley’s cover of Gone Daddy Gone is juuuust on this side of obscure, but it’s a great example of the sort of thing I’m talking about. Why not listen to the original instead?

    Well, if the answer is “nobody has heard of the original”, that’s a pretty good answer. (“Nobody but theater dorks has heard of the original” is a somewhat less good answer.)Report

    1. That… Really does sound a lot like the original. I don’t really think of the Violent Femmes as obscure, more ‘not quite played to death whenever an album came out’ but maybe my circle of high school friends was non-representative.Report

      1. Well, the original came out in 1983.
        St. Elsewhere came out in 2006.

        So there’s 23 years between.

        Africa came out in 1982.
        As we all know and use to justify why people ought to either believe things or stop believing things, it is 2018.
        That’s 33 years between.

        Surely there’s a formula to figure out the proper statute of limitations on whether you can remake any given song.

        Would it be okay to remake Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean? Maybe Thriller?
        The answer is: No. Hell no. Just forget even thinking about it.

        Would it be okay to remake Smooth Criminal?
        Eh. Maybe. If you speed it up a little.

        Would it be okay to remake… Human Nature?
        Ah, jeez. That’s a tough one, innit? The problem is that people wouldn’t really be able to improve upon it and, let’s face it, they’d probably take it in some weird Tori Amos direction without, you know, actually *BEING* Tori Amos and being able to get it there.

        Better not to try.

        But is someone wanted to remake… oh, what else came out in 1982… Avalon! If someone wanted to cover some Roxy Music songs, oh boy. They should.

        Why should I be stuck here with only Roxy Music’s version of Roxy Music songs?Report

          1. Oh, I’m aware.

            There’s part of me that sees that song as a modern version of the old “cover” thing. Alternative Radio doesn’t play R&B. The problem is that Smooth Criminal is one hell of a good song. As close as you’re going to get to perfection in this vale of tears.

            But it’s officially R&B or whatever we’re calling “race records” these days.

            So get The Crew Cuts to be on the cover and the alternative radio can play it now.

            Edit: Don’t get me wrong. Alien Ant Farm seems to be doing a “tribute” rather than a “rip-off” and they’re trying to celebrate Michael Jackson in the video. So I’m not yelling “THEY’RE RACIST!” or anything like that. It’s just that the song is good. But it’s R&B. So alternative radio stations can’t play it… but they’ll play the hell out of the AAF song.Report

    2. I think that there might also be a bit of a caste system as well.

      Let’s say someone tried to remake a Freddie Mercury song. People would get pissed off. I’m pissed off right now just thinking about it. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU COULDN’T SHINE FREDDY MERCURY’S BOOTS!

      Let’s say someone tried to remake a Phil Collins song. Who would care?

      Let’s say someone tried to remake a Tom Petty song. You know what? Tom Petty would probably be happy to hear that. Good for them.

      Let’s say someone tried to remake a Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen song. Yeah, get in friggin line, pal.

      It doesn’t seem to have much to do with whether they’re liked or beloved or whatever.

      But there are people you can cover safely and people you can’t.Report

    3. I had never heard that song before so I listened to the original too and yeah, it was pretty similar. But obscure, so it could be a rediscovered gem. Thanks!Report

  18. I recently ran across piano versions of Sweet Child O’ Mine. I can’t say that any one of them blew me away beyond the first few bars, but that intro is remarkably beautiful on piano.Report

  20. Postmodern Jukebox is a has reinterpreted into a different genre like a thousand pop songs on YouTube, and most of them are great.

    I also like the S&G cover. Probably most of you have seen it, but Bernie Sanders had an ad out with that song (the original), that for me was one of the two best ads during the 2016 cycle.Report

  22. I actually saw Weezer perform this live back in July at a concert in Cincinnati. It feels a bit like this one got away from them and Rivers kind of wishes he didn’t have to keep playing it, but the crowd did enjoy it in a cheesy way.

    As for covers in general, I’m a firm advocate that every concert is better for having at least one of them. I saw Jason Isbell shortly after Tom Petty died and they closed with ‘American Girl’. When that opening guitar riff started it brought the house down. I’m talking goosebumps and people in tears while they were singing at the tops of their lungs. Love those moments.Report

    1. See I wonder if part of the reason I dislike the song as much as I do, is because I really do like Weezer (at least Weezer of a couple decades ago, LOL) and I wish some of their actual songs were getting as much love and play as “Africa” is.

      Live covers I don’t mind and in fact enjoy – the spontaneity of it all. There are a lot of fun live covers I really like even when they’re not perfect or better than the original.Report

  25. My leader in the clubhouse is the absurdly talented, and absurdly eccentric, Cat Power. Her covers of “Satisfaction” and “Wonderwall” are both excellent

    (My leader in the clubhouse for worst cover? Elvis Pressley’s unforgivable hatchet job on “Hound Dog” which renders the song’s lyrics entirely meaningless. Eww.)Report

    1. Oh, and also, The AV Club’s Undercover series is awesome, and is a great place to go searching for new bands covering classic tracks.

      Here’s the Dirty Dozen Brass Band doing Beck’s “Debra”

      Here’s The Regrettes doing Sweet’s “Fox On The Run”

      And here’s Passenger doing TLC’s “Scrubs”

      All of these are from the show’s eighth season. There are lots and lots and lots to explore.Report

    1. Nouvelle Vague’s bossa nova takes on classic punk and new wave songs are something to behold. I like their version of Guns of Brixton by the Clash.

      Pedantic Alert: Johnny Cash singing Ring of Fire is a cover. The original was by the Carter Sisters.Report

          2. Oh yeah I’ve heard that before, I like it! Never realized that was a cover. Thanks guys for posting! Gettng a lot of new stuff to explore. 🙂Report

    2. Oh, if we’re going to count people remaking their own music, I’ve got to bring up Neil Young. He’s been doing this so long that he doesn’t have any undue respect for early rock – he can cover it, even his old stuff, without having to pay tribute to it or prove something by tearing it down. His live stuff is sometimes sloppy, but that’s part of the charm (at least, it’s charming when you can listen for 20 seconds then try another video).Report

  35. One other I really like is John Mellencamp’s rendition of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night.” The latter is good, but Mellencamp’s is just better.Report

  36. Several people have raised the point of classical music. Symphonies perform versions of the same pieces and that’s expected. This whole deal with a song “belonging” to anyone is definitely a 20th century+ concept.

    But this got me thinking – an oboe is an oboe is an oboe but with modern music, the voice is the instrument. Tom Waits and Kelly Clarkson are just not playing the same instrument. It seems to me like a cover song can be like taking a piece written for a violin and performing it with a piccolo and then changing the tempo markings and essentially turning it into a new song. Classical musicians don’t do that (at least that I’m aware) and in fact their goal is to play the music as written. So it’s no wonder the London Symphony can play the same piece as the Chicago Symphony and it really doesn’t matter what recording people buy.

    But add in the vocal instrument and people do start wanting to hear the different versions. People might want to hear the same piece sung by Maria Callas and Marion Anderson and it will still be the same song, but definitely worth hearing both versions. Modern music takes this even further, with the potential to change pretty much everything about a song. I think the ability to change voices and tempos and instrumentation really does make modern covers an entirely different animal than classical music.Report

  38. (I’m not sure the word “fun” has ever been used to describe anything sung by Alanis Morissette)

    Is it then ironic that the video for Ironic looks to be the most fun Morissette ever had in the music industry?Report

  39. This is a performance of a song that Sia actually wrote in the first place so I’m not sure if this is even a cover exactly but it’s still really good.

    There’s gotta to be a name for the entire genre of songs that were written by someone, made popular by someone else, and people then discover the original songwriter. Carole King was pretty famous for this. Dan Navarro a bit less so, (and partly because his brother Dave is a lot more famous).

    One of the best concert experiences I ever had was when Navarro opened for another band (Eddie from Ohio) and at the conclusion, Eddie from Ohio brought Navarro and his bandmate* back on the stage and they all did a rendition of We Belong that burrowed into my soul.

    *I can’t remember who, Lowen had long since passed awayReport

    1. Agh, that’s mean! You know what they say, never ask a question you don’t want the answer to.

      Seriously, I do like Weezer and would love to hear an actual new Weezer song that was a) getting this kind of attention and b) was worthy of getting this kind of attentionReport

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