Favorite Cover Songs

The other night, after I picked up my husband so we could carpool home together, I was excited to find the new Anberlin cover of the New Order song “True Faith” playing on the radio.  It’s one of the better covers I’ve heard in a while, and I had been wanting my dear hubbie to hear it as well.  He agreed that it was a pretty decent cover, which then prompted us into a discussion of what makes a good cover song.

The cover, or a new rendition of a song by a different artist, is pretty popular in modern music.  However, while it can be nice to hear artists sing other artists’ songs, I can’t say that I’m all that impressed with most covers.  A truly good cover transforms the previous song into a new one — and a good one, too!  You can certainly have a cover that sounds totally different but totally terrible, i.e., No Doubt’s version of “It’s My Life” or Jessica Simpson’s version of “Take My Breath Away” or Madonna’s “American Pie.”  Sometimes, the change can be achieved by just altering the tempo of a piece or having an amazing voice with a passion not heard before in that song.  I’m not saying that all covers need to transcend their originals such that the original fades out of memory and the cover becomes the de facto version of a song (best example: Diana Ross singing “You Can’t Hurry Love”).  But a really good cover needs to be a legitimate, positive evolution of that song.

So, I got to thinking — what were the best covers of my time?  I’m not even 30 yet, so I realize I’m using a small set of time, but it was fun nonetheless to sit down and really muse over it.  Here’s what I got: