The Return of Cover Songs III

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The Dead South are way cool. Haven't seen their take on "Chop Suey" before though. And Lorde doing my favourite Tears for Fears song? I'm in (not really a fan of TfF, just liked that song).

Will probably have some music for both here and the regular music thread soon. We had a basic Internet package on our cruise which meant no streaming allowed so haven't listened to much beyond what I have offline in Amazon Music.
 
"Angel" by Sarah McLachlan is at once beautiful and intensely sad. It was originally written about the death of Jonathan Melvoin of Smashing Pumpkins to a drug overdose, and more generally about the struggles that bring musicians to use drugs like heroin. Here, Chloe Agnew of Celtic Woman gives a gorgeous rendition. It's not Celtic Woman's usual fare but Chloe's voice and the arrangement are near perfection.

 
BetteTheRed said:
Heard this yesterday on CBC, rather mesmerized:

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I love that version. Second favourite after the original.

Strangely, I am not otherwise a big Disturbed fan. Draiman has a magnificent voice but their music isn't quite my cuppa even in my current metalhead incarnation. I like his performance on Nita Strauss' "Dead Inside" better than anything I have heard from own band outside of this cover.
 
Oh wow. In 1988, the great Whitney Houston recorded "One Moment In Time" for the Olympics. With the 2024 Olympics opening last week, UK singer Lucy Thomas tackled the song and the results are magnificent.

 
Leonard Cohen covers are very common, but there's only a few songs that seems to get most of the attention, like "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah". So when I saw that Romanian guitarist Andrei Cerbu had covered "In My Secret LIfe" from Ten New Songs, I was intrigued. Andrei has several projects on the go, but mostly focuses on rock and metal so that's another reason this caught my attention: It just wasn't Andrei's usual. I first came across him through covers of metal bands like Nightwish. But he actually gives a very nice blues-y rendition of the song, even taking lead vocals himself (he has a stable of singers, mostly talented young women, that he usually works with). He's a hellagood guitarist but is also a decent vocalist, something that I did not know. And get a load of that guitar solo. Best one I have heard in a Cohen cover since Jennifer Warnes had Stevie Ray Vaughan join in on "First We Take Manhattan".

 
Consider this a North American free trade in music song. It's Mexican band The Warning covering Canadian-born, US-based singer Alanis Morissette. And they do it very, very well. This is one of my favourite bands right now. And no, I have no idea why Paulina, the drummer, is wearing dark shades indoors here.

 
ninj said:
Synthetic strings, if you were wondering.
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Covers of Western music on Asian instruments seem to be the all the rage anymore. Nini Music (Taiwanese but I think she moved to the US) is my favourite.

 
A rather odd but well-executed cover. This is a solo piano cover of the hard rocking "Heavy is the Crown" by Linkin Park. One of the highlights of the original song is a stunning, long scream from the band's new lead singer, Emily Armstrong. But how do you do that on a piano? I think this pianist handles it quite well. The "scream" is at 1:51 in this performance. She also has a "studio version" shot in her home but I heard this live performance from a mall in Singapore first.

 
The Doors as metal?? Actually, this version of "Riders in the Storm" works pretty well. The "band" Mortemia is actually one guy doing all the instrumentals who then invites various vocalists to sing lead. Here, the vocalist is Emma Zoldan, a French singer who has been kicking around the metal scene for about 20 years and currently sings in the band Sirenia.

 
I just discovered Miss Velvet today and I'm already turning into a fan. Solid blues-rock vocal sound and she's been working with a fantastic South African producer named Esjay Jones who co-writes and produces. I have come across Jones before but I forget where. Here, Miss Velvet and Esjay Jones team up with a cello and small choir for a wonderful take on Aerosmith's "Dream On". That's Esjay on guitar and backing vocals.

 
"I Drove All Night" was a song dropped from Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl (his final studio album before his death) and picked up by Cyndy Lauper, who had a hit with it. Roy's version finally came out on a posthumous compilation, followed a few years later by a Celine Dion cover. I have been in love with the song since the Lauper version, even if I favour Orbison's (I adore Orbison's voice).

So when a version from Nordic metal supergroup Cemetery Skyline came up last week, I was a bit surprised and skeptical. In fact, I wondered at first if they had just done their own song under the same title. But, no, it was a new cover of the Lauper/Orbison hit. And it is wonderful. Mikael Stanne's smooth, lush baritone and the band's melodic approach to metal suit the material perfectly. I found out afterwards that Cemetery Skyline has been doing the song in concerts for a while so this is just them getting around to recording it in studio. The video has a woman driving around in a hearse after leaving a cemetery, a nice nod to the band's name.

 
While her roots are in metal, Dutch singer Anneke van Giersbergen has quite a diverse history; ranging from her original band The Gathering, to singing with Canuck Devin Townsend in the Devin Townsend Project, to various solo projects and collaborations in a variety of musical styles and genres (she once did a whole show of acoustic Kate Bush covers, for instance).

Here, newly posted from an appearance on Dutch television, Anneke covers "Ray of Light" by the one and only pop legend Madonna. Given Anneke's background, it is not a surprise that her version rocks harder than Madonna's but still doesn't stray too far melodically. For my money, I prefer Anneke's performance, even if this is one of the few late career Madonna tracks I do like.


And a pretty good fan video of Anneke covering Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" in a voice remarkably like Kate's.


Interesting Kate Bush trivia: Kate Bush had neither read the novel "Wuthering Heights" nor seen all of any of the film versions. The song is inspired by seeing the opening scene of the 1939 version starting Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
 
From the "how did I not find out about this sooner?" file. "Life in a Northern Town" by Dream Academy was a favourite of mine when it came out in 1985. And Justin Hayward, lead singer of the Moody Blues from 1965 until their end in 2018, is one of my favourite singers in all of pop and rock. So Justin singing "Life in a Northern Town" ... yeah, I'm in. Backup "band" is the London Philharmonic and the wonderful, multi-talented Mike Batt did the arranging and production as well as being the voice for the backing chorus.


Trivia note: The original Dream Academy recording was produced by Pink Floyd guitarist-singer-songwriter David Gilmour.
 
And in a slightly different vein, Burlington, Ontario pop band Walk Off The Earth have been working and touring with violinist Lindsay Stirling on a few occasions of late. Their latest collab was recorded on tour and, fittingly, it's the old Willie Nelson classic, "On The Road Again" accompanied by video of the tour. The kids you see are the children of WOTE's Gianni Luminati and Sarah Blackwood, who tour with their parents and perform as "The Luminati Suns" (puns, as they are all sons).

 
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