Covers! We’ve all listened to one before whether we knew it was one or not. “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston, originally written and performed by Dolly Parton with a nearly 20-year gap between them. “All Along the Watch Tower” by Jimi Hendrix, written and performed six months earlier by Bob Dylan. “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, written and recorded by Otis Redding two years prior. Other than those more notable examples, what are some other iconic songs covered by famous Alternative bands? Let’s uncover song covers!
There are many iconic songs that have been covered by alternative artists. From Bowling For Soup’s cover of Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time”, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor covered by Cake, to Even Dolly had another of her songs covered with The White Stripes’ Cover of “Jolene”. Some heavier hitting ones that I like are Disturbed’s cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence”, Shinedown’s cover of Lynryd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man”, And two covers of George Michael songs with Seether’s “Careless Whisper”, and Limp Bizkit’s “Faith”.
Some covers just don’t work nearly as well as the original version to me. This isn’t to say that the songs are bad necessarily, rather they don’t have the charm that the originals do. A few examples would be Everclear’s cover of Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl”, Fallout Boy’s cover of “Beat It” by Michael Jackson, and Tori Amos’ cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Her cover takes Nirvana’s song in a piano-heavy and somber direction, and it doesn’t have the same effects as the original.
While covers can go one way or the other, it’s great to see when both the original and cover artist work together to perform their song. One of the most incredible examples is when Run DMC and Aerosmith teamed up to perform Aerosmith’s “Walk this Way” together. The fusion of DMC’s hip hop with Aerosmith’s iconic guitar riffs was an unexpected match made in heaven. Additionally, back in 2008, Chris Cornell and Linkin Park collaborated in concert together to perform “Hunger Strike” from Cornell’s supergroup Temple of the Dog. It was an incredible performance, and Cornell also sang Linkin Park’s “Crawling” with them at the same concert.
Covers are a great form of taking what was already created by another artist and twisting it into a brand new and creative direction while still keeping the song’s charm. While some work incredibly well, others not as much, but what matters is whether or not both parties are satisfied with the song. What about you? Do you like the cover more or the original? You shall be the judge.
