The Most Covered Rock Songs Ever June 29, 2010
Posted by Michael in Music.trackback
There are a few songs that challenge rock bands. If they want cred, they try stand up to the original version of these songs and do their own rendition and make it their own statement. This is rock band macho at its best.
In other words, they do a cover.
I figure, two songs have withstood the test of time as the ultimate challenge for bands attempting to cover a classic.
So, turn the volume way up on your speakers.
By my reckoning, I think the best song to cover is either this one (even Clapton and Bob Marley did it):
Or this one (even Hendrix and Stevie Ray did it):
See, both of those songs were written by Bob Dylan, and I can’t stand listening to Bob Dylan’s nasally whiny voice. Sorry, but I would not spend a nickel on a Dylan CD. But, Dylan is some kinda frickin’ icon when it comes to doing covers.
And you have to admit, there are great covers of his songs.
What do you think?
Knockin’ on Heavens Door fit the movie soundtrack it was written for. That’s it. There is no other setting where that song is just not painful. No one has ever done a decent cover because the song itself sucks and is boring w/o the movie context. Bob Marley had an excuse. He was a friggin’ doper and had a tumor is his skull. Eric Clapton ………… shit. He was a doper too. Wait. He was recovering when he recorded that………….. OK. Explains that. But he didn’t have a friggin’ brain tumor. So what’s his excuse?
That song just sucks. God MIGHT be able to make a decent cover of it.
Maybe.
It amazes me that anyone else would even bother. Classic case of, “Can’t make ice creme out of Shit.”
Hendrix owned “All along the watchtower.” Stevie Ray did a tribute version to Jimi & that’s understandable and ok.
Dylan wrote a lot of decent songs that other folks made into good/great songs.
As much as I admire Dave Matthews……… well shit. I met him at FarmAid in 2001 and he’s a doper too. His odd vocal phrasing doesn’t do anything to make that song any better.
Sorry Michael. Gotta vote these ones off the island.
I agree with Grumpy, although this post may be intended to bring JackM out of the woodwork.
I read somewhere that Hendrix was initially uncertain about doing All Along the Watchtower on an album and was talked into it. IIRC that was his only top 10 hit.
I’ve long felt that, lately, when a popular band does a cover of a previously, popular song, they are finished, at least as far as ever being as big as they once were.
Counting Crows did Big Yellow Taxi. No hits since.
Guns N Roses does Knocking on Heaven’s Door. Done
Dixie Chicks – Landslide – Done.
Smashmouth – I’m a Believer – gone.
The list goes on and on. As soon as I hear someone do a cover, I figure that’s pretty much the end of their career.
Hey, Hey, hey-hey yeah.
I am not a fan of the singing voice of Axl Rose at all. I can listen to only a few select G&R songs without rolling my eyes, one of the acceptable ones being “November Rain”.
Even that may be because it was released with a cool, spooky video about Marriage and Death on the same day.
“The list goes on and on. As soon as I hear someone do a cover, I figure that’s pretty much the end of their career.”
I think there might be some credence to this. Have Sheryl Crow or Celine Dion had ANY hits since doing covers of G n R and AC/DC, respectively?
To be fair, about 25% of Elvis’s most well-known songs are covers, and Van Halen’s first radio hit was a cover of The Kinks, but I think they’re the exceptions that prove the rule
I remember from the beginning of The Stand that the Larry Underwood character was supposed to do a cover of “Hang On Sloopy” and refused, because he knew that would be the end of his career.
The most pathetic are the one-hit wonders whose ONE HIT was a cover–think Rascall Flatts or the Ataris (or don’t, if it’s too painful).
That may just be an instinctive thing–the public starts thinking, “Well, if they have to resort to releasing covers, they must not have anything original left to say.”
By the way, I was at that Dave Mathews concert at Folsom Field. It was raining like hell through the opening act (can’t remember who, one of the guys from the Fugees?) and by the time Dave came on, my girlfriend and I were soaked. Decent concert, but the George Thorogood show I went to at Red Rocks when I was 12 was a lot more interesting. Drunk bikers beat stoned college students any day of the week for entertainment.
I’ve been to Red Rocks, but never saw a show there. Dang, that’s got to be the best venue in America. It’s like our version of Slane Castle. Everybody wants to play there.
I always have preferred the U2 cover of All Along the Watchtower.