Love Under the Covers

I love covers.

I do.

I'm a sucker for them. 

I just cracked open the posthumous Amy Winehouse record Lioness: Hidden Treasures. It opens with her cover of "Our Day Will Come" (Originally a hit for Ruby and the Romatics, 1963) and my heart melted.



I also love it when an artist takes a familiar song and twists it and turns it and deconstructs it and reconstructs it into something equal to, or better than,the familiar original. In in some cases, MUCH better. I have a favourite example. Richard Thompsom's cover of a Britney Spears hit.

I also love this interpretation of an Elton John classic Rocket Man. It's from a mediocre collection of EJ covers called Two Rooms from 1991. I'm not even a real Kate Bush fan but the reggae arrangement is kinda cool and at about 3:23 Davy Spillane sneaks in with a rockin' Irish bagpipe solo. Love it.



Robbie Fulks is a country folk/roots performer who stretches the boundaries of his genre of music. He defines the "alt" in alternative country. So it was a real pleasure but not a huge surprise that he decided to put out a record of Michael Jackson covers. I stumbled on the video below of his explanation of why he did it. I've also added a song from his record Happy and the original Jackson Five version Mama's Pearl from 1971.







Those are some examples of covers I like. There are hundreds more. Please tell me about some of your favourite covers -  leave a comment.