Depeche Mode

Shake The Disease – Hooverphonic

Some Velvet Morning – This was a song that was performed by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra sometime in the late 60′s. When listening to this psychedelic song, you can’t help but get mesmerized by Hazelwood’s country vocals. The video is pretty classic as well. I mean the guy is riding a horse on a beach with what appears to be wearing some type of futuristic garb for the time, and Nancy looked like she just floated down from freaking space. I’m wondering who can cover this song and bring the same level of mystery to it? That band would be Slowdive and the song is off their album Souvlaki, which was produced by Brian Eno. Another band that also did a cover of the song was Primal Scream with Kate Moss, but I wasn’t too keen on it.

Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra

Some Velvet Morning – Slowdive

Superstar – That’s right people your reading it correctly and there’s nothing wrong with your eyes. I know it was sung by The Carpenters, but you’re just lying to yourself if you can’t admit how good this song really is. It’s a prime example of a hopeless love song and has been used as a measuring stick for all the other love songs that came after it. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I hope you get the point. In 1994 a tribute album called If I Were A Carpenter was released. From then on my senior year in high school was playing Sonic Youth’s cover of Superstar very loudly in my 92 Civic. It was okay though, because it was Sonic Youth. Fast forward 14 years later and it now shows up on Juno’s soundtrack. I guess it was a good cover then.

The Carpenters

Sonic Youth

Strangers In Paradise – Now there are many cover versions of this song and I can’t really tell you who the original singer was, but the more popular one would be Tony Bennett. The remake that I really like was Saint Etienne’s version of the popular tune. They added their groovy 60′s style to the song and made it just really chill, and of course Sarah Cracknell’s voice made it bliss.  I found a video of Tony Bennett singing Stranger In Paradise to a collage of Hedy Lamarr on YouTube as an example. Goodness gracious, actresses now can’t even hold a candle to the way these elegant beauties looked back then. I also was lucky to find the Saint Etienne version as well, but it’s not the actual video.

Tony Bennett

Saint Etienne

Well, there you have it. Those are some of my favorite covers that I truly appreciate, but I was thinking of doing a part 3 sometime later. I think I opened a can of worms with this topic and I certainly have more songs to discuss. Until then…

So I what I did was compiled a few songs that I really liked that were covers. Each one of the songs has the cover bands’ style all over it and it sounds like it could be an original. I apologize in advance for the sloppy examples. What I’m trying to do is let you compare the originals to the remakes, but they’re all in different formats. So, let’s get started.

Blue Flower – The original band that performed this was Slapp Happy in 1972. They were an avant-garde band formed in Germany by an an experimental English composer. Now that sounds avant-garde to me. Two remakes that were most noticeable of this song were Mazzy Star’s version from the album She Hangs Brightly and Pale Saints off the album In Ribbons.

Slapp Happy – Blue Flower

Mazzy Star

Pale Saints

Vapour Trail – This song I hold dear and so does every other shoegazer fan. Ride’s Vapour Trail off the album Nowhere was a song that captured it all and was one of those songs that was always on a British Indie / Shoegazer compilation album.  Now the band that covered the song were originally from Southern California, but relocated to a much cooler Seattle, Washington. In cooler I mean a great place to live type of cool. The cover band’s name is Trespassers William. My friend had this song playing on his Itunes and I was like ” Who the hell is this?! This is a Ride song!” After calming down I thought this was actually a pretty good cover and I like what they did with it.

Ride

Vapour Trail – Trespassers William

St Swithin’s Day – The original was written and performed by an English musician named Billy Bragg. He’s more of a mix between folk, and rock and he knows how to write a damn good song. Without this song I may have never heard of a band called Dubstar. Their version of St. Swithin’s Day is epic with its electronic pop grooves and Sarah Blackwood’s voice is just icing on the cake. This is such a good song and has been on many of my self made compilations. The video for Billy Bragg’s version is not the real video, but I wanted the full song to compare to and it’s the only example I can find.

Billy Brag

St. Swithin’s Day – Dubstar

Everybody’s Talkin’ – Harry Nilsson’s 1969 song was made popular by the movie Midnight Cowboy starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. For some reason whenever this song comes on everybody just has to sing it, and you know which part I’m talking about. Now the cover version done by the English band Moose is another great remake. Moose may of started as a shoegazing band way early in their career, but they definitely moved on and found their own unique sound. They’re a great band if you are into the whole British indie / rock scene.

Harry Nilsson

Everybody’s Talking – Moose

Stay tune later in the week for part 2 of My Favorite Cover Songs.