My Top 10 Song Covers

I’ve been working hard for a while now, mostly editing with a few articles written for American Thinker, and hard work isn’t always a lot of fun. When I’m not writing, I’m usually reading something, and even my “pleasure” reading has a purpose…for example, as I continue finishing what has turned out to be an almost complete rewrite of my first novel, Coastal Empire, and my editing and “other” work on the Rootstock epic fantasy series written by L. H. Leonard. Legend of the Storm Hawks and Path of the Spirit Runner are already available in ebook or print (audio still to come), and the final two novels in the collection are scheduled to be published before the end of summer.

John Sandford

Like I just said, when I’m not writing, editing, entertaining animals or trying to clean house, I’m usually reading something, and it was probably written by John Sandford, my favorite author of mystery and suspense novels. Quite frankly, John Sandford is my role model. Before I die, I can only hope that one of my novels will be half as good as his average effort in the “Prey” series featuring Detective Lucas Davenport, or his other series of novels featuring BCA Investigator Virgil Flowers.

Sandford’s plots are typically brilliant, and his dialog both razor sharp and realistic. His timing is impeccable, whether comic and dramatic. John Sandford is so good that it was more than ten years and maybe twenty novels before I ever found what I clearly knew was a mistake in one of his novels. And if the reader wasn’t a John Sandford fanatic like me, the mistake wouldn’t have even been noticed.

In a conversation taking place in a Lucas Davenport novel, one character from the Virgil Flowers series was referred to by the wrong name. And to be perfectly honest, I’m fairly sure that the mistake was not by an editor, not Sandford himself. Two different characters with the same last name had their first names confused. The reason I suspect an editor was responsible instead of the writer is the character in question had the unforgettable name “Johnson Johnson” and an editor might have mistaken that as a typo…it doesn’t feel like a mistake the writer would have made.

In stark contrast, when I recently reread Coastal Empire for the first time in almost ten years (doing research for Atheist’s Prayer, the now-delayed third Mercer novel) I found an alarming number of egregious and amateurish mistakes that necessitated the rewriting effort, which I plan to complete this week so I can get back to my other backlog of work.

However, no matter how much better John Sandford might be at writing detective novels than me, there is one skill I have at which he pales in comparison, and that is compiling lists of great rock and roll songs. My list is killing his list. At the very end of his excellent (as usual) mystery thriller Broken Prey, Sandford includes Lucas Davenport’s list of the 100 best songs of the rock era, and there is one thing I can assure the reader: my private detectives, Robert Mercer and Nick Mason, have much better taste in music than Lucas Davenport.

While my own list (which of course, will also be subjective) will have ZZ Top, it will not have “Legs” on it. Aerosmith? No problem. “Dude Looks Like a Lady”…that’s a BIG problem. Is Lucas Davenport’s taste confined to expensive clothes and women? That song might be one of the worst Aerosmith ever recorded. And while I can appreciate seeing “Walk This Way” on the list, why the cover version by Run D.M.C.? And Billy Idol should never be on a list of “best” anything. Three songs each by Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones I can see, but three by Guns N’ Roses, too?

Not that they weren’t deserving, I suppose, but the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” over “Patience”?

True, Sandford nailed a few of the selections on Davenport’s list, but more often than not even when he chose the right artists, he didn’t pick their best songs. No question, “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos will be on everybody’s list of best rock songs, and we agree on stuff like “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix and seeing “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones makes me smile, but Foreigner would not make my list, or Robert Mercer’s.

There is one jewel on Davenport’s list, I must concede — this cover of “Hotel California” by the Gipsy Kings was a proverbial diamond in the rough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHVZ-6fZS8

Compiling a list of 100 best rock songs takes a fair amount of time that I’m not willing to waste at the moment, mostly because of my obsessive personality (I’ve only got 40 songs on my list so far and much work to get done today). You’ll just have to trust me that when my list of best rock songs is complete, it will be a better list than John Sandford’s. That’s probably the only thing I’ll ever write better than him, but it’s something.

However, even today I have enough time to make this list of my top 10 favorite covers, as inspired by Sandford’s inclusion of the Gipsy Kings. I haven’t added them to my list of favorite covers yet, but they are now officially under consideration. The song doesn’t pass the “exceeds the original” test, but it does score high marks for the original interpretation.

Here are the rules for my list…it is ordered. The original artist is identified within parentheses. The cover must be equal to or better than the original version, or a unique interpretation. Parodies are excluded, because otherwise half of this list would be songs by Weird Al Yankovic.

The #1 song on this list is the best cover ever, in my opinion, and #10 most questionable title that still made the list.

So, without further ado, please enjoy the music below. If you like these songs even half as much as I’ve enjoyed listening to them again while writing this post, this was well worth the effort.

Honorable mention: Jealous Guy by Roxy Music (John Lennon)

Honorable mention: Highway to Hell by 2Cellos and Steve Vai (AC/DC)

Okay, now on to the actual list…

Number 10: “Soul Man” performed by the Blues Brothers (Sam & Dave) Okay, this is more blues than rock, but the Blues Brothers were surprisingly talented and entertaining for a band of professional musicians fronted by a pair of comedians on Saturday Night Live.

Number 9: “Blinded by the Light” performed by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (Bruce Springsteen) Has anybody besides me even heard Springsteen’s version? For years–maybe even decades–I thought this was the original version, not a cover.

Number 8: Stop Your Sobbing, performed by The Pretenders (The Kinks) Love both The Kinks and the Pretenders. Both versions are excellent, although quite similar. Pretenders singer Chrissy Hynde had a child with Kinks songwriter Ray Davies in the 1990s but eventually married another man, making these lyrics ironically relevant when she’s singing them. At least Ray earns royalties though, right?

Number 7: The Sound of Silence, performed by Disturbed (Simon and Garfunkel. Honestly, I never really liked the original version because it lacks the emotion of this cover, performed live.

Number 6: Hard to Handle by the Black Crowes (Otis Redding) The Crowes pay homage to Otis Redding and do his song justice. It fit in perfectly with “Jealous Again”, “Twice as Hard”, and the other original songs on the album.

Number 5: All Along The Watchtower performed by Jimi Hendrix. The two versions are very different–Dylan’s original version was acoustic and featured a harmonica, while Hendrix blistered his electric guitar and immortalized the song. Not quite the grand larceny accomplished by the number 1 cover version on this list, but it’s in the same ballpark.

Number 4: The Man Who Sold The World by Nirvana (David Bowie) This song gives me chills, it’s such a great live performance. It’s not easy to cover a David Bowie song, in my opinion, and do it equally well. If not even better.

Number 3: (Tie) Thunderstruck by Steve n’ Seagulls AND 2Cellos (AC/DC). For whatever reason, this song inspires lots of original covers, and here are two of the very best.

Not to be outdone, this two guys get really crazy on classical instruments. I LOVE their sense of humor, and the audience (lack of) response. Perfect.

Number 2: Sweet Child of Mine by Luca Stricagnoli (Guns N’ Roses) This acoustic instrumental is a jaw dropping feat of musical genius. Stricagnoli is literally a one-man band, although in fairness he does have to play multiple instruments simultaneously to achieve the effect. This is perhaps the most amazing musical achievement I’ve ever witnessed that was accomplished by only one man.

Number 1: Hurt performed by Johnny Cash. (Trent Reznor/ Nine Inch Nails)

First, for comparison, the original…

Reznor wrote the song, but Johnny Cash clearly stole it from him.

The original pales in comparison to his cover. See for yourself.

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