Awesome Music

The Johnny Cash version of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt will go down in history as one of the greatest covers of all time. That version served as the inspiration for Hildegard von Blingin’s medieval take on the track. It’s every bit as much of a gut-punch as the previous versions, only with more harp.

If there’s one genre of music we never thought we’d hear on a pipe organ, it’s disco. But it’s the internet, and here we are. So put on your boogie shoes, click play, and listen as organist Vincent Thévenaz plays the 1977 Bee Gees hit Stayin’ Alive on the Great Organ at Geneva, Switzerland’s Cathédrale Saint-Pierre.

Musician Luca Stricagnoli trades his guitar for a banjo for this wonderfully unexpected cover version of Eminem and Dr. Dre’s track Forgot About Dre. Even without the acerbic lyrics, Luca’s pizzicato plucking cuts sharp as a knife.

Now here’s something you don’t see every day… a guy playing the accordion, yodeling as fast as humanly possible, and smoking a cigarette at the same time. We’d only wish we could have been there to see the performance in person while we glugged down a giant stein of beer.

Musician Davidlap has become quite the expert at replicating various sounds on his electric guitar. In this video, he does a mighty fine job reproducing sound effects from the Mushroom Kindom, from the satisfying coin collection “ding” to the urgency-instilling “hurry up” music that kicks in when you get a star power-up.

There are lots of ways to learn to play the piano. Joel Creates and his friend Eric came up with the cruelest method. Their electric piano keyboard uses negative reinforcement, zapping students with high-voltage electricity if they mess up. It has electrodes on every key, so it shocks the same finger that played the wrong note.

Hungry? Enjoy a slice of Cake wrapped in spicy Red Hot Chili Peppers in this amazing remix from DJ Cummerbund. The track perfectly melds the song Going The Distance with Can’t Stop, and sprinkles in a dash of R.E.M.’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) for flavor.

To celebrate 25 years on Broadway, the cast and musicians of The Lion King stopped by the NPR offices to perform a series of songs from the award-winning musical. Their warm and enveloping performance of songs like Circle of Life, They Live in You, and Can You Feel the Love Tonight will bring sunshine to even the darkest day. HAKUNA MATATA!

Ice age coming. Ice age coming. Blue are the people here. Remixer Willam Maranci is a master at combining songs that don’t seem to belong together. One of our recent favorites is this combo of Radiohead’s climate change chant Idioteque and Eiffel 65’s Eurodance hit Blue. It’s as unlikely a successful pairing as ham and pineapple.

Do you need a break from your regular music playlists? Then open up this video, hit play, and drop it into a background tab. Jorf assembled this epic 10-hour and 53-minute mix of 227 tracks programmed by various chiptune musicians and played with the classic 8-bit sounds of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

(PG-13) Jack Black never plays video games anymore… except for all of them. That’s what we gleaned from this Tenacious D track and its animated music video by Oneyplays’  Chris “Oney” O’Neill and Adam Paloian. By the end, you’ll be rooting for Kyle Gass to exact his revenge. And here we thought they were friends til the end.

Musician Leo Moracchioli is back with another pop song converted into heavy metal. We always thought The Proclaimers’ 1988 song I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) was a little cheesy, but we have to say we’re warming up to Leo’s significantly edgier take on the track.

To celebrate the release of Guardians of the Galaxy 3, musician and producer Jared Halley performed a wonderful a cappella version of Redbone’s 1973 hit Come and Get Your Love. Jared’s multi-layered approach gives added depth to an already great song.

Robyn Adele Anderson and her bandmates knocked it out of the park with this vintage Broadway-style performance of the My Chemical Romance hit Welcome to the Black Parade. That’s Demi Remick clacking her feet and proving what pop-punk always needed was more tap dancing.

System of a Down is known for its ferocious guitar shredding and staccato vocals. Musician Andre Antunes replicated their guitar sounds and melded them with the similarly rapid-fire vocals of Punjabi singer Daler Mehndi and his energetic 1998 Indi-pop track Tunak Tunak Tun. We’ve struck internet gold, baby.

When There I Ruined It isn’t laying waste to popular songs, he’s experimenting with them like Victor Frankenstein in his laboratory. He created this lovable monster by grafting the DNA of Smashmouth’s All Star onto Eiffel 65’s Blue (Da Ba Dee). Get ready for a bad case of earworms.

Scratching records on a turntable takes a bit of practice to even get the basics right. In this video from Wired, DJ Shortkut shows us just how far you can take the art of turntablism by gradually ramping up the difficulty level. He does a great job explaining each technique, so it serves as an excellent tutorial too.

Not every song translates well to medieval instruments like a lute, zither, and recorder. But this hardcore cover of the R.E.M. track Losing My Religion by musician Algal the Bard plays out perfectly. Perhaps the Athens alt-rock band was born in the wrong century.

One of the most elaborate custom pianos in history, Pictures at an Exhibition, was created by noted painter/pianist Paul Wyse. The one-of-a-kind Steinway & Sons Model D concert grand piano features 24-carat gold, cast bronze, and classically painted scenes to pay tribute to Modest Mussorgsky’s most profound composition for solo piano.

If want to be a Mandalorian, you must recite their creed, “This is the way,” to acknowledge that anything is acceptable. Auralnauts went back through the first three seasons of the hit Star Wars show and tallied up every time the phrase was spoken, and turned it into a pleasant little synthwave track.

Radiohead and The Smiths are both English bands, and they’ve both taken up political and social causes in their music. But sonically, they couldn’t be more different – until now. Musician Desmond Doom took the restrained sounds of No Surprises and gave it the jangly guitar and vocal stylings of This Charming Man.

Luca Stricagnoli is a master of acoustic guitar. His cover of the Arctic Monkeys’ track Do I Wanna Know? doesn’t involve as many guitar necks as some of his other arrangements, but it’s every bit as entertaining. Luca’s fingerstyle technique and guitar drumming add so much depth to his performance.

Musician Navzad Dabu provided late-night commuters in NYC’s Metropolitan Avenue / Grand Street subway station with a phenomenal private performance. His graveyard shift concert included back-to-back covers of a dozen Radiohead tracks. We would have stood there for the whole show and missed our train.