The inherent risk of cover songs is that they can either be really good or totally bad. Some covers don’t do anything groundbreaking at all, while some completely alter the original landscape.
As for bizarre cover song pairings, these four seem like they’d never work in a million years. But, to our great surprise, they turned out amazing.
“Rolling in the Deep” by Linkin Park
Linkin Park isn’t the first band to come to mind when considering Adele covers. It’s not even the second, or third, really. But at the 2011 iTunes Festival, Linkin Park and Adele crossed over when Chester Bennington performed a powerful rendition of “Rolling in the Deep”.
Beyond his vocal duties in Linkin Park, Bennington had a beautifully expressive range. There’s almost something religious that happens when he hits the high notes in the chorus. Accompanied by Mike Shinoda playing sparse, evocative piano, it’s clear that this surprising cover song was really a once-in-a-lifetime moment for the crowd.
“Lacrymosa” by Evanescence
This 2006 track from Evanescence’s second album, The Open Door, resists easy categorization as simply a cover song. It’s more of a transformative work instead of a cut-and-dried cover, but it’s still one of the more surprising pairings in cover song history.
“Lacrymosa” may have lyrics and a new arrangement courtesy of Amy Lee, but its foundation is still the “Lacrimosa” movement of Mozart’s Requiem from 1791. Truly an ambitious project, but executed with incredible skill typical of Amy Lee.
“Ring of Fire” by Adam Lambert
During season 8 of American Idol, future runner-up Adam Lambert performed a cover of “Ring of Fire”, notably covered and made famous by Johnny Cash. The task on the show was to choose a song from the Grand Ole Opry repertoire. Essentially, it was country night. Lambert didn’t feel that his style and presence really lent themselves to country music, which resulted in this unique cover.
The South Asian-influenced arrangement was a surprising twist, but Lambert’s performance impressed even country star and guest mentor Randy Travis. Technically, Lambert’s “Ring of Fire” is a cover of singer Dilana’s cover of Johnny Cash’s cover of Anita Carter’s original. Through the many layers, Adam Lambert’s performance is still a highly inspired cover song.
“Brick House” by Rob Zombie, Lionel Richie, and Trina
Possibly the most surprising selection of names put together already, but add the song title, and it becomes totally bizarre. It seems like there’s no way this could be real. Rob Zombie, Lionel Richie, and Trina covering the Commodores in 2003? Preposterous.
But it’s real, and what’s more, it was for Rob Zombie’s film House of 1,000 Corpses. It also cemented a lasting friendship between Richie and Zombie, despite their drastic artistic differences. Zombie nervously contacted Richie, former co-lead singer of the Commodores, with his own cover of “Brick House”. Richie recalled, “He played this track for me, and it blew me away. He Zombarized it. Under no circumstances was he thinking The Commodores.” But something was missing.
“‘You can’t have ‘Brick House’ without some howse in it. You’re not saying howwwse right,’” he told Zombie at the time, via Blabbermouth. Richie provided his vocals, but felt it needed feminine energy.
“We knew we needed someone who was mean and nasty and dirty,” Rob Zombie told Entertainment Weekly. That led them to Miami rapper Trina, who successfully put some stank on it. The result is pure insanity, but the kind that you can’t stop listening to.
The post 4 Bizarre Cover Songs That Are Actually Insanely Good appeared first on VICE.
