I know I’m a bit late to the party here, but check out this video from Tunng. The title of the song is “Bullets”, which can be found on their Good Arrows album.
This is an amazing video from an equally amazing band. If you enjoyed it, please check out their other albums Comments Of The Inner Chorus and This Is Tunng….
These are, in order and sequence, the Top 15 Cover Songs that (the royal) we here at Terrible Analogies obsess over on a daily basis. It’s understood that many of these songs can be had from multiple sources, so please forgive me if I don’t recognize your album of choice.
And with that, please accept as gospel…
#15) Orgy : Blue Monday
Album: Candyass
Originally sung by: New Order
There have been more than a dozen remakes of New Order’s Blue Monday by just as many bands, but in 1998 Orgy put their industrial/electronic/rock stamp on the song and rode that baby for all it was worth before flaming out in spectacular goth-rocker fashion. This was, without doubt, Orgy’s biggest hit (pop quiz hotshot…can you name another song by Orgy? I didn’t think so).
#14) The Postal Service: We Will Become Silhouettes
Album: Such Great Heights (EP)
Originally sung by: The Postal Service
What the hey? It’s a band covering one of their own songs? Yep, you caught me. This is The Postal Service covering their song We Will Become Silhouettes, but this is an acoustic version that can only be found on their Such Great Heights EP. It’s definitely more upbeat than it’s predecessor, and if I had to make a life-or-death decision I’d have to say that this is the preferable version of the two. Track this song down and give it a spin, then try to call me a liar.
#13) Red Hot Chili Peppers: Higher Ground
Album: Mother’s Milk
Originally sung by: Stevie Wonder
From the opening bass line to the group sing-along chorus, the Red Hot Chili Peppers upped the funk on this Stevie Wonder classic. Higher Ground allowed the RHCP to break into the mainstream, setting them up perfectly to jump record labels, hook up with Rick Ruben, and two years later give forth upon the world Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik. (check out their “making of” movie Funky Monks for some great insights behind Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik. You can thank me later).
#12) Seu Jorge: Rebel Rebel
Album: The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions
Originally sung by: David Bowie
The first of several David Bowie cover songs on this list. This is nothing more than Seu Jorge with an acoustic guitar giving us a Portuguese language cover of Rebel Rebel. Even if you don’t know the language this song instantly seems recognizable, familiar and comforting.
#11) The Smashing Pumpkins: My Blue Heaven
Album: The Aeroplane Flies High (box set, disk 5)
Originally sung by: Gene Austin
Originally written 1927, My Blue Heaven is a standard which has been covered by over 100 artists. It’s a shock to hear Billy Corgan in such stylistic alien territory, accompanied by piano and soft violin. Once you’re able to accept this odd premise, My Blue Heaven quickly grows on you.
#10) Concrete Blonde: Everybody Knows
Album: Still In Hollywood
Originally sung by: Leonard Cohen
If you’ve seen the movie Pump Up The Volume, then you’re familiar with this version of Everybody Knows. The original song by Leonard Cohen clocks in at nearly six minutes. Concrete Blonde axed a few verses from the song, tightening it up and bringing it down to 4:45. Being a Cohen fan I’m a bit torn by this, but it becomes readily apparent that Concrete Blonde injected this downer tune with their unique vibe and made this song their own.
#9) Fishbone: Freddie’s Dead
Album: Truth And Soul
Originally sung by: Curtis Mayfield
Gone is the funk, replaced by rock, punk, and ska. Freddie’s Dead originally appeared in the soundtrack to the amazing 70′s exploitation film Super Fly. Freddie’s Dead was the opening salvo from Fishbone’s landmark album Truth And Soul. Propelled by Freddie’s Dead, Fishbone managed to extend their identity and presence beyond the confines of the college rock/alt scene. In my mind, Curtis Mayfield will always have top billing whenever I think of Freddie’s Dead, but Fishbone isn’t far behind.
#8) Lemonheads: Mrs. Robinson
Album: It’s A Shame About Ray
Originally sung by: Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel’s hippy/folk song Mrs. Robinson was transformed by the Lemonheads, who stretched and pulled at the weak points, bending and flexing the entire piece until it barely resembled the original product. Evan Dando managed to stay off the needle long enough to turn this 70′s relic into an uplifting song well suited for pool parties, dorm room keggers, dusty old overhead supermarket speakers, and clumsy suicide attempts. The Lemonheads permeated the culture with this most excellent of covers.
#7) Bauhaus: Ziggy Stardust
Album: Swing The Heartache
Originally sung by: David Bowie
This cover became one of the go-to encore songs for what seemed like every tour Bauhaus went on. When you hear David Bowie sing this song it comes off as a personal, heartfelt, sincere offering. Bauhaus built upon this foundation, enlarging the sound until the band was the insignificant center of a larger work of art which took on a life of its own. My inner-goth child gives you a black nail polish ‘thumbs up’, guys.
#6) The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy: California Uber Alles
Album: Virus 100 – A Tribute To The Dead Kennedys
Originally sung by: The Dead Kennedys
Yes, yes…I know that this song appears on The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy’s album Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury. It’s just that the version that they recorded for Virus 100 is tighter, angrier, with sharper teeth and delivery. If you’re a Dead Kennedy’s fan you’ll find it impossible not to sing along. ”Knock knock at your front door, let’s have big fun.”
#5) The Gypsy Kings: Hotel California
Album: The Big Lebowski (soundtrack)
Originally sung by: Eagles
The Eagles built a career around Hotel California. We’ve all heard this song morph through the entire range of stages from groundbreaking to passé, and had thought that it’d been forever driven into the ground by a generation of aging, drunken 70′s stepchildren, buried beneath years of emotional childhood trauma, remembrance of rejection by your first true love, and Ace Of Base’s single The Sign. That was until The Gypsy Kings wrapped their spanish-infused genius around this song and made it special once again. Their slow, tinkering lead-in eventually runs head first into a brick wall of rough, insistent vocals by Nicolas Reyes and manic ethnic guitar brilliance. Be sure to crank up the volume before the chorus hits, because for a non-rock song this thing is just so. Damn. Metal. “Welcome to ze Hotel California,” indeed.
#4) Nirvana: Oh, Me
Album: Unplugged In New York
Originally sung by: The Meat Puppets
It took a genius like Cobain to recognize the beauty in the poorly sung The Meat Puppets song Oh, Me. One listen to the original, it’s amazing that it managed to get pressed into wax. To say that The Meat Puppets couldn’t sing their way out of a heroin baggie would be an understatement. As I type this I’m playing the original in the background with cotton stuffed in my ears in preparation for the initial God awful high-pitched chorus. Then along comes Nirvana, who expertly molds and shapes this poor excuse of a song into a thing of pure audible beauty. I guess this is a prime example of when life gives you crap, you make crap-onade.
#3) God Lives Underwater: Fly On The Windscreen
Album: Music For The Masses – A Tribute To Depeche Mode
Originally sung by: Depeche Mode
For a band who admittedly sound a whole heck of a lot like Depeche Mode, God Lives Underwater turned their Depeche Mode dial up to ’11′ when they recorded this cover version of Fly On The Windscreen. Wow. For a solid tribute album GLU served up the best track. This album could have contained just this one song repeated ten times and I’d still plunk down my hard earned $12 to buy it.
#2) M. Ward: Let’s Dance
Album: Transfiguration Of Vincent
Originally sung by: David Bowie
M. Ward is an artist who can turn the most basic, joyless tune into something that can make you simultaneously laugh and cry uncontrollably. At first glance you could be forgiven for not identifying this song as a David Bowie property. M. Ward has so twisted the original work to make it sound as if it might have come from the pen of a decrepit Johnny Cash warped on a week long splurge of downers and whiskey, and originally sung by any number of ancient obliguious crooners that you might hear coming from the cracked speaker of your grandmother’s mono radio tuned to a forgotten out-of-band channel from the deep past. When it finally dawns on you that the faint scratching at the base of your brain is your mind trying to come to grips that this used to be an upbeat dance tune, you smile with the insight of an enlightened being at the cusp of nirvana, hit the ‘rewind’ button, and listen again with new ears to an amazing cover song.
#1) Faith No More: Easy
Album: The Best Of Faith No More
Originally sung by: Lionel Richie
Who would have thunk that a Lionel Richie song could rock so hard? I could go on and on about what an uberific, game changing cover this is, but chances are you’ve already heard it and understand that the world in which we live in today would be a much colder, starker reality if Faith No More never covered this tune. The opening piano riff lulls you softly and slowly in as Mike Patton’s vocals convey a sense of sad desperation and acceptance of a man lost in the world. Minutely, incrementally, the coolness of this cover song seeps into your consciousness, and realization of its divinity is solidified when Mike groans “Ungh!” just as the lead guitar solo kicks in. A better cover song there can not be.
If there’s one thing people know about me, it’s that I love music. I love listening to albums, going to concerts, and surfing the web until the early morning hours searching for new bands that I’ve never heard of or listened to before. There’s nothing like discovering fresh music from previously unknown artists who pour their hearts and souls into their work.
There’s no denying the perfect jam. That one song that instantly speaks to you. From opening chord to closing beat, it drives to you move, shake, and sway…and there’s just no stopping it.
Even while understanding this simple fact of life, it’s difficult to imagine what this person is listening to that’s making her twitch and flail in such a violent and random manner…at the public library:
The more I watch at this, the less “real” she looks. It’s almost as if one of those animatronic machines from Disney’s “The Hall Of Presidents” escaped, spirited itself away in the dead of night, adopted an assumed identity in an undisclosed location, donned a wig and dress, and took up rockin’ out to Mariah Carey or Solja Boy on public terminals.
The more I think about it, the more it makes perfect sense. The public library provides a unique opportunity for a robot to discretely recharge its depleted power cells, and nobody bothers an apparent and possibly deranged homeless person throwing fits in the reference section.
Few and far between are the albums which transcend normal shelf life. They instead become part of the landscape and a snapshot of life as it was at the moment. They slowly intertwine themselves into the very fabric of our daily lives. We use them as place markers on which we can look back and reflect upon what was happening to us personally and societally. Everyone knows the words to the songs, and the songs mean everything to us.
Here is a small collection of albums from the 90′s that fall in this category. No matter how hard you tried you just simply could not avoid them. Songs from these albums appeared in movies, television shows, commercials, sporting events, the mall, gas station, and even the Gap. They saturated the radio waves and had their own end-cap displays at the record stores. These songs and albums had lives of their own.
1) Counting Crowes: August & Everything After (1993)
From the opening moody guitar and the unmistakable morose vocals of Adam Duritz, our collective consciousness knew that there was something special about this album. “Round Here” was the song that introduced the general public to the Counting Crows. It was quickly followed up by “Mr. Jones”, “Sullivan Street”, and “Time And Time Again”. Even though this album weighed heavily on somber issues, listening to it was good for the soul.
2) Gin Blossoms: New Miserable Experinece (1992)
With their breakthrough hit “Hey Jealousy”, the Gin Blossoms showered us with light, upbeat songs about love, self doubt, and a hope that the future will be a bit brighter than the past. Luckily for us, the Gin Blossoms were no one-hit wonders. ”Mrs. Rita”, “Hold Me Down”, “Found Out About You”, and “Allison Road” lie scattered about on this album like stepping stones to guide us over the churning, tumultuous waters of New Miserable Experience.
3) The Lemonheads: It’s A Shame About Ray (1992)
Only someone like Evan Dando could breathe new life into a Simon and Garfunkel tune and capture the attention of the world. Breathy, personal, and with a folky edge, Dando sang about deeply personal subjects in a way that made you think that he was talking about somebody else. He didn’t half-step around subjects such as drug use and death. Instead he tackled them head-on and lent them a softening, pop edge that we couldn’t help but sing along with. This album is like a who’s-who of songs, which included not only “Mrs. Robinson”, but also “Confetti”, “It’s A Shame About Ray”, “Rudderless”, “Alison’s Starting To Happen”, “Kitchen”, “Ceiling Fan In My Spoon”, and my personal favorite, “Bit Part”.
4) Spin Doctors: Pocket Full Of Kryptonite (1991)
We quickly learned that “Two Princes” will do anything to earn the love of a particularly special woman, and damn it if we couldn’t stop ourselves from bopping our heads along with the song. It seemed as if the Spin Doctors appeared out of nowhere overnight with a song that was catchy as hell, grabbed us firmly by the ears, and before their momentum ran out turned us on to equally uplifting tunes such as “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues”, “What Time Is It?”, “and “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”. As I write this I’m having difficulty pulling myself away from this album. Good stuff.
5) Ben Folds Five: Whatever And Ever Amen (1997)
Sure, the piano confused us at first, but once you got over the fact that it was the central instrument of Ben Folds Five, “The Battle Who Could Care Less” took center stage, and could soon be heard on just about every radio station you turned to. And it deserved such status. Ben Folds didn’t leave us hanging with just one fantastic song. One spin of this album made instant converts with songs such as “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces”, “Fair”, “Song For The Dumped” (I wonder if he ever got his black t-shirt back?), “Kate”, “Smoke”, “Evaporated”, and a song about an abortion (“Brick”). Unfortunately, Ben Folds Five is no more, but Ben Folds has continued on with an amazing solo career.
6) The Black Crows: Shake Your Money Maker (1990)
Rare is the band that achieves the stature and heights such and The Black Crowes. With their heavy blues rock sound, they grabbed our attention with the theme song of the year “Hard To Handle”, mellowed us out with the pseudo-ballad “She Talks To Angels”, eased us back into their groove with “Twice As Hard”, then stunned us with the hits “Jealous Again”, “Could I’ve Been So Blind”, “Think N’ Thin”, “Struttin’ Blues”, and “Stare It Cold”. Southern rock never sounded so good.
7) Blues Traveler: Four (1994)
It seemed as if John Popper of the Blues Traveler was everywhere in 1994. This overweight giant of a man came off as a joke if you didn’t know any better. Wearing an odd brimmed hat and sporting what looked like ammunition belts slung across his chest which he used to carry around a quiver of harmonicas instead of bullets, he looked as out of place as anybody ever could. But, once the Blue Travelers began playing and John started in on his harmonicas like a man with the devil on his mind, then grabbed the mic and belted out songs such as “Run-Around”, “Fallible”, “Hook”, and “Price to Pay”, he shed the skin of an outsider and became one of the best frontmen in the blues/soul/rock business.
8 ) Jane’s Addiction: Ritual De Lo Habitual (1990)
The opening jumbled spanish sentence proclaiming that Jane’s Addiction had “more influence over your children than you do” made us do a double-take, then twisted our heads all the way around with some of the most far reaching and in-your-face tunes ever to grace your CD player. Jane’s Addiction ruled our world in 1990, spitting out the soon to be classics “Stop”, “No One’s Leaving”, “Ain’t No Right”, “Been Caught Stealing”, “Three Days”, etc..etc…etc… Heck, there wasn’t one bad song on the album. Not a one! To top it all off the album cover was considered controversial in its day. So much so that it was issued with two different covers to appease the more cordial and tightly-wound members of society.
9) Metallica: “The Black Album” (1991)
Say what you will about Metallica, but they officially became rock gods with the release of the “Black Album”. This is the album that turned your Care Bare-watching kid brother into a metalhead overnight. The “Black Album” cemented Metallica’s place in music history with songs that bore deep into our brains and ground our skulls into a fine powder…and we enjoyed every second of it. So throw your devil-horned hands into the air and bang your heads along with me to the songs “Enter Sandman”, “Sad But True”, “The Unforgiven”, “Wherever I May Roam”, “Nothing Else Matters”, “The God That Failed”, “My Friend Of Misery”, and “The Struggle Within”. Bask in the glory of this album, and ignore anything else of theirs that came after.
10) Pearl Jam: Ten (1991)
Sure, Nirvana was the trendsetter, but it was Pearl Jam that put more of an indentifiable, personal touch to their songs that almost everyone could relate to or understand. Once the world became aware that Pearl Jam was “Alive”, they quickly forked over their hard-earned cash and picked up their groundbreaking album, Ten. It wasn’t long before “Once”, “Even Flow”, “Jeremy”, “Porch”, and “Black” could be heard spilling out of every redneck’s IROC-Z and college kid’s Volkswagen bug. Pearl Jam owned, and to this day continue to make fantastic music under the radar. Check out their latest offering, “Backspacer”!
11) Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream (1993)
This is the album that your sister owned. This is the band that your brother followed. And before anyone realized what a prima donna Billy Corgan was, this was the album that you jammed to in your car at maximum volume. In fact, it’s probably still sitting in your glove compartment, unplayed and unloved for far too long. Go get it. Quick. Go on…I’ll wait for you. *twiddles thumbs*…*whistles aimlessly*…You’re back? Great. Now, I dare you to listen to “Cherub Rock”, “Quiet”, “Today”, “Rocket”, “Disarm”, “Mayonaise”, and “Spaceboy” without cranking up the volume on your now-pathetic computer speakers. These songs rock much harder than you remember, don’t they?
12) Radiohead: The Bends (1995)
Yeah, yeah…Pablo Honey came first, but that was merely a teaser for one of the greatest albums ever made by one of the greatest bands that ever existed. The Bends was Radiohead’s way of smashing you over the head with a 10-ton boulder and making you beg for a second dose. Everything melancholy, desperate, and beautiful was puréed, sifted, flash frozen, shattered, processed, then packaged up and given upon the public who loved and embraced this band wholeheartedly. This album contained gems such as “Planet Telex”, “The Bends”, “High And Dry”, “Fake Plastic Trees”, “Just”, “My Iron Lung”, and “Black Star”. And to think that Radiohead followed up on The Bends with OK Computer, Kid A, and Hail To The Thief. Mindblowing.
To celebrate the fact that I’m on call this week (boo!), please let me present to you (for no apparent reason) Louis Armstrong:
You can’t see it, but I’m throwing the devil horns as hard as I can, unlike this cat from High Fidelity who doesn’t know the difference between the death fist and a shaka:
Yeah man, that’s very metal.
I always found it odd that metal has its own hand symbol, but opera/country/folk/etc doesn’t. You can’t legitimately throw up the horns at a jazz club, a job interview, or a church picnic and honestly look people in the eye come morning. It’s a shame really, because the horns are the ultimate, innate expression of everything that truly rocks. It’s the physical expression of what your soul feels is the epitome of cool.
Long live the devil horns.
