Covers that are better than the original

[banzai]

Have a cigar - the solo after the halfway mark is mental.

[Not DJSapp]

Taylor Swift meets drum and bass. Much better, but I love Pendulum

[TBS]

Country music song of the year

[mcski]

That cover is a fucking travesty, although I’m glad it generated more money and kudos for Tracy. But as the cover, that one annoys the fuck out of me. The original is all I want to hear

[PNWbrit]

That cover is a fucking travesty, although I’m glad it generated more money and kudos for Tracy. But as the cover, that one annoys the fuck out of me. The original is all I want to hear

^ this.

I went to the Nelson Mandela 70th birthday concert at Wembley in 88.

Her performances there stole the show.

[TBS]

^^^ I agree with the both of you.
At least she got the best country song award and she gets $500k (& counting) in royalties.
Even though it’s not a country song…

[babybear]

the original is way better but it was a smart cover for the time interval and audience.
ftr I don’t like country music at all

[tuco]

[Mofro261]

This one always gives me chills, Brandi Carlile w/ Soundgarden backing.

[TBS]

Cover


Original


Will let y’all decide which is better

When Shelby Lynne did this album of Dusty covers, she refused to do “Son of a Preacher Man”. Said it wouldn’t be right to even try

[xyz]

I might like this Tool cover by a bunch kids better than the Tool version of 46 and 2

https://youtu.be/mYKLvYGqaC0?si=ukL7jqiqg6qBvAAg

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Country music song of the year

Maybe the studio version is good, that’s not even as good as Tracy


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[xyz]

.

[MakersTeleMark]

[schwerty]

MTM….I was just gonna post that. Great stuff.


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[rideit]

This swings.

[rideit]

^ this.

I went to the Nelson Mandela 70th birthday concert at Wembley in 88.

Her performances there stole the show.

I was there as well, I even chatted for a minute outside the loo with Peter Gabriel.

[teleee]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7RVw3I8eg

Not sure if this one has been shared (yes I’m lazy). But this performance is one of my all time favorite covers.


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[Ted Striker]

But that pour some sugar on me cover is great.

[Danno]

This swings.

there should be a whole section of this thread devoted to Post-Modern Jukebox.

[PB]

Agreed. Great pipes on the vocalist too.

[AK47bp]

Ukrainian soldier plays Metallica

https://youtu.be/oW_EqW5iUCM?si=pQyW6-FOPPWRVPhy

[AlpiNord]

Maybe not better, but a good version that gets ya going in the wee hours:

[Hood26]

I know Comb’s cover of “Fast Car” wasn’t too loved here (my own opinion is mixed), and it certainly doesn’t fit the complete title of this thread because it is in no way better, but if you haven’t heard Chapman and Comb’s Grammy performance; it’s worth your time.

Here is the NYT Lindsay Z’s critic review

When a beloved artist who has not performed live in some time returns to the stage, we often expect them to appear fragile, unsteady, ill at ease. But during Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, when the camera first pulled back from a tight shot of a woman’s fingers picking a familiar riff on an acoustic guitar and revealed the face of the great, elusive folk singer Tracy Chapman, what you noticed was the joy radiating from her face. Her contented smile. The unwavering tone and rich steadiness of her voice.
It was a genuine moment of warmth and unity, the sort seldom offered these days by televised award shows — or televised anything, really. Singing her rousing 1988 hit “Fast Car” live for the first time in years, duetting with the country star Luke Combs — whose faithful cover of the song was one of last year’s defining hits — and taking in the rapturous applause of her musical peers, Chapman gave off the feeling, in the words of her timeless song, that she belonged.
Thirty-five years ago, at the 1989 Grammy Awards, Chapman stood alone onstage and performed a wrenching rendition of “Fast Car” accompanied by only her own acoustic guitar.
What made Sunday night’s performance feel different wasn’t just the time that had passed, or the gray hair that now elegantly frames Chapman’s face. It was the presence of Combs, born a year after that Grammy performance, regarding Chapman with an awe-struck reverence. He seemed to be a stand-in for the many, many people over the years — of all races, genders and generations — who have heard their deepest desires reflected in this song and wished to pay Chapman their gratitude.

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They traded a few lines and harmonized beautifully on the chorus — her tone opalescent, his bringing some grit — but Combs never overshadowed Chapman. He knew that in that moment, no one could. Something about the way he looked at her said it all: His eyes shone with irrepressible respect. Here was a grown man, an assured performer who sells out stadiums, visibly trembling before the sight and the sound of the folk singer Tracy Chapman.
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He was hardly alone in that: The few crowd shots during the performance revealed some of music’s major stars, including Brandi Carlile, on their feet, thrilled, before a standing ovation.



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When a cover of a famous song becomes a hit decades after the original was released, it usually requires a stylistic reboot to resonate with a new generation. But the appeal of Combs’s version, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, came from how closely it hewed to Chapman’s recording. Combs gave the rhythm section a little more arena-rock oomph and added a slight country twang to his phrasing, but that’s really it. It’s a cliché to call a song “timeless,” but here was proof: “Fast Car” did not need any major souping-up to become a hit once again, more than three decades after it was first released.

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Still, this resurgence, and the success of Combs’s recording, sparked a debate about the song’s proper genre. Combs was born in North Carolina and eventually moved to Nashville to start his music career, and all of the music he’d released before “Fast Car” had been classified, for chart purposes, as country. That meant that when “Fast Car” won song of the year at the Country Music Association Awards last November, Chapman became the first Black songwriter to win that prize. This felt less like a cause for celebration than a stark reminder of how few Black women get to be considered “country” artists — a genre with a long, complicated racial history. Was “Fast Car” a pop song, as the Grammys had classified it in 1989? Was it a folk song when a Black woman sang it, and a country song only when a white man did?



But the culture wars that divide us so deeply elsewhere seemed, perhaps fleetingly, far away Sunday night.
The song, during Chapman and Combs’s five-minute performance, felt incredibly spacious — larger than the limitations of genre, welcoming and expansive enough to hold every single person it had ever touched, regardless of the markers of identity that so often divide us. It was a rare reminder of music’s unique ability to obliterate external differences. “Fast Car” is about something more internal and universal. It is a song about the wants and needs that make us human: the desire to be happy, to be loved, to be free.


Q&A with Pop Music and Styles Staff

Can you please explain how voting for the Grammys works?

Ben Sisario, Pop Music Reporter, said:
The Grammys are voted on by more than 11,000 music professionals — performers, songwriters, producers and others with credits on recordings — who are members of the Recording Academy. The process involves members first scanning through huge lists of submissions to vote for nominees, then, after the final ballot is set, for the winners. In the past, anonymous committees had the power to overrule members’ selections of nominees; after some controversy those were largely disbanded, though the academy still has the power to reassign submissions if necessary.

[AK47bp]

It was a great performance, gave me goosebumps. Watched it multiple times.