Coverpalooza!

I love this playlist! It is so full of awesomeness. I really took some time in crafting this collection of songs. Despite the fact that there are 30 tracks, which is longer than usual, I was cutthroat. Great bands can cover other great bands, but the results just aren't always special enough to stand alone as a cover song. I think that the best cover songs are made carefully and abstractly; someone else supplied the music and lyrics, so what happens next? It's great for one artist to pay homage to another, and the best way this is done is if the cover song diverges from the original in a new perspective, while still retaining the integrity of the original. It is hard to do, but it is also incredibly fun to do. Fun is another criteria for creating the best cover song, it should always be fun. For my own ukulele covers, I often use Chordie.com to search for chords.

Adele! She does some amazing covers, here is a Buzzfeed article listing some of her others. This song would be on the playlist however Grooveshark did not have the file in their library. Lame!

I was really blown away by the Cee Lo Green cover of Band of Horses' "No One's Gonna Love You", it might be my favorite on the list (aka. I can't stop listening to it). I didn't even realize that it was on his most recent album, The Lady Killer (2010). I was really into Band of Horses during freshman year of college, they're wonderful to listen to during the fall/winter. Second place favorite might be the Benzedrine Monks of Santo Domonica's cover of Queen's "We Will Rock You", just because I love to imagine them standing in a church in their robes, rocking it out.

To come up with some ideas for this playlist, I used this awesome website called The Covers Project. It is a searchable database with comprehensive listings of many, many bands covering others. Obviously though, the place with the most covers, updated constantly from all around the world, is YouTube. There are some fantastic unknown musicians who do fabulous covers that we would never hear, had it not been for YouTube.

EDIT, 09/7/2011

I was going back through older posts of mine, and realized that Grooveshark is not an ideal way to share playlists in the long term. One of my lists from earlier this year went from having about ten songs to...three? While I am not exactly sure where the songs come from on the website, the fact of the matter is, they disappear and it affects my lists, causing me to lose whatever I worked to share with you in the future. So, from now on I am going to make cuts like this with the list of songs, just so they are never lost. I suppose any site besides a direct link to the song may do this as well, YouTube isn't forever either. So, anyway, click the link below for a listing of the tracks.

1. "The Weight" - Aretha Franklin

2. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" - The Rolling Stones

3. "Baby I Love You" - Ramones

4. "Dreams" - Robin Pecknold

5. "My Girl" - The Rolling Stones

6. "Sweet Jane & Beast of Burden" - The Kooks

7. "Louie, Louie" - The Kinks

8. "Here Comes My Baby" - Yo La Tengo

9. "Light My Fire" - Stevie Wonder

10. "Stand By Me" - Led Zeppelin

11. "Flourescent Adolescent" - Kate Nash

12. "Know Your Onion!" - Of Montreal

13. "Waterloo Sunset" - David Bowie

14. "Hey Ya" - Obadiah Parker

15. "Handle With Care" - Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins

16. "Cupid" - Amy Winehouse

17. "No One's Gonna Love You" - Cee Lo Green

18. "Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love" - The Morning Benders

19. "Lovefool" - The Morning Benders

20. "You Really Got A Hold On Me" - The Zombies

21. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Nouvelle Vague

22. "Wild Night" - Martha and the Vandellas

23. "Let's Dance" - M. Ward

24. "Unchained Melody" - The Supremes

25. "We Will Rock You" - Benzedrine Monks of Santo Domonica

26. "Money" - The Doors

27. "Gloria" - Jimi Hendrix

28. "Bohemian Rhapsody" - The Flaming Lips

29. "Kashmir" - London Philharmonic Orchestra