Covers that are arguably better than the originals:

Scott Stansbury said:
Marianne Faithful doing "Working Class Hero" on "Broken English"

Absolutely, but then, I think the Beatles are wildly over-rated. Oh, and welcome to the forum, Scott.

How about:

"Black magic woman" Santana (Fleetwood Mac)
"Cocaine" Eric Clapton (J J Cale)
"Bird on a wire" Jennifer Warnes (Leonard Cohen)

And finally (ducks for cover)...

"Money" Elkie Brooks (Pink Floyd)
 
covers

I love the smoky and dark voice of Marianne Faithfull. Not for everyone´s taste, but perfect for me.
Her cover of ¨ghost song¨ -backed on guitar by Keith Richards- is wonderful. Better than the Patti Smith original for me.

Another Marianne´s great cover is Leonard Cohen´s ¨tower of song¨: 100% kosher. And very funky.

Speaking of ¨tower of song¨, another demented cover that I like a lot is done by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. There, he performs in a mixed style, sounding sometimes like Elvis, sometimes like Jim Morrison... crazy.

Cheers
 
Discounting situations where the cover is a better known classic, probably my 'the cover is better than the original' is Jeff Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallejuah. Also, two of my favorite CDs are John Hammond's Wicked Grin and Holly Cole's Temptation which are both completely comprised of Tom Waits covers. I especially like how Ms Cole covered Tango Til They're Sore.
 
Hi!

I always think, in order to do a great cover

a) the song to be covered has to be good in the first place and
b) the covering band / artist has to really understand the original song.

In that category fall for example:

- "Planet Caravan", orig. by Black Sabbath, redone by Pantera
- "When The Levee Breaks", orig. by Led Zeppelin, redone by A Perfect Circle
- "Painkiller", orig. by Judas Priest, redone by Death
- "Famous Blue Raincoat", orig. by Leonard Cohen (seems to be one of the most covered artists out there), redone by Tori Amos
- "Loverman", orig. by Nick Cave a.t.b.S., redone by Metallica
- "Life Is Life", orig. by Opus, redone by Laibach
- "Macht Kaputt was Euch kaputt macht", orig. by Ton Steine Scherben, redone by Totenmond
- "Halt Dich an Deiner Liebe fest", orig. by Ton Steine Scherben, redone by Freundeskreis


Just some suggestions...


Bye,

Arndt
 
Last night I was reacquainted with Jimmy Little’s 27th(!) album “Messenger”. This elder Aborigine was ‘discovered’ by producer Brendan Gallagher, and did an album of covers of Australian pop-rock: mellow, alternative & hard rock, from the last 20 years.

This is a concept cover album, with the theme of sweet mellow vocals, sparse subtle production, calmness spiritualty and wonder. The kind of thing if I read about, I think “what a lot of crap”. But it works very well, and won an ARIA award for Adult contemporary album.