Iron and Wine – Such Great Heights (a Postal Service cover)
Absolutely love this. Frank Turner also does a great cover of The District Sleeps Alone Tonight which I love. Can’t bloody stand the Postal Service but they did write some fantastic songs. I should seek out more Postal Service covers
What’s remarkable is that she had such an amazing talent, and then just disappeared from the music industry almost overnight. She’s done nothing since and apparently lives a simple, quiet life in Ireland somewhere.
I was introduced to The Dickies early and thought their version of Paranoid was an original. Only years later to be shown Black Sabbath’s version, which I thought was a poor cover version at first.
See also The Dickies version of Nights in White Satin, Sounds of Silence and of course the Banana Splits.
I’m a big fan of metal(ish) and punk covers of pop songs so my votes go to
for being a bit of an emotional rollercoaster
and
for being fun.
Honourable mention for Less Than Jake doing the whole grease soundtrack and having the gall to release it as an album, and David Gray’s version of Say Hello Wave Goodbye
in the end though, the Cash version of Hurt is probably the right answer, or Jeff Buckleys Hallelujah, but that’s been done to death now and it’s been ruined a bit.
Northwind, yes not really a fan of Postal Service either, I heard the Iron and Wine version first and then when I heard the Postal Service version thought it was a poor cover, before realising the truth later (kudos to them for writing a great song though).
Jef, yes also think Dickies are great, kind of regret now swapping my Dickies Paranoid single for Start by the Jam when I was 15 now!
Love those bands with Punk sensibilities and a healthy dose of humour, like the Dickies and the Rezillos. In that vein does this count, It brings up memories of Laughter, madness and mass bundles at youth club discos for me!
Amazing for 2 reasons
– the poignancy and defiance in the lyrics, having just lost Richey Edwards, James singing about not giving up
– It captures a great band on the cusp of mediocrity 🙂
That Jacob Collier version is not bad but it’s not great, although he’s probably the only person who could pull that off at all. But he’s done some much better covers, of which my fave is probably his Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing.
I realise this will probably be far to jazzy for many of the punk/heavy rock sensibilities here.
That Vincent Black Lightning cover does nothing for me.
Someone mentioned Townes van Zandt’s version of Dead Flowers up thread. I love that, it was the song that introduced me to TvZ as it was on the Big Lebowski soundtrack.
Oh and following on from the Vincent Black Lightning comment earlier I think there are very few occasions on which other artists have covered his songs really well. But this is one – actually I prefer it to the original.
