Awesome Music

As part of his “Should I/Can I Cover It?” series, musician Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq. performs a track that clearly wasn’t designed to be played on a tiny 4-string ukulele. But the old-fashioned musician gave it the old college try regardless. If Thomas looks familiar, it’s because he has No More F**ks to Give.

If you think that a guitar is just meant for making music, you’re wrong. Musician Cameron Cooper shows us how to get some crazy and unusual sounds out of an electric guitar, including a horse’s whinny, a church bell, police sirens, and some creepy evil clown sounds.

The Melodicka Bros. are really good at reinventing popular songs. This time out, they took the high-energy Blur track Song 2 and reworked it with a 3/4 time signature. The result is a very different, yet equally entertaining track, alternatively known as “Song 3.”

There’s no question that David Bowie had a distinctive singing voice. Musician Joshua Woo has perfected his impression of the Thin White Duke, as he demonstrates in this Bowie-esque performance of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. His version of Stayin’ Alive by Oasis is spot-on too.

Steven Blake of the band Animal Sun has figured out that if you listen closely to some popular songs, the vocals sound like they were sung by another famous person. By showing a photo of the person, your brain will be totally convinced that it’s true. Find more examples on their Instagram reels page.

NEBO’s brightest Davinci flashlight yet kicks out an astounding 18,000 lumens in turbo mode, lighting your way up to a distance of 830 feet. It’ll run for up to two hours in 10,000-lumen mode and 12 hours in 800-lumen mode and has an adjustable 2x zoom lens. It’s IP67-rated waterproof and has an intuitive magnetic control dial.

Multi-instrumentalist Joe Porter is back with another medley of music performed on various percussion instruments. This time, he played rock tunes from bands like Metallica, AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Iron Maiden. It’s also likely to be the only time you’ll hear Sweet Child of Mine played on a steel pan drum.

The 1977 Bee Gees track Stayin’ Alive is one of the most famous songs of the disco era. Musician Charles Berthoud remembers the song a little differently than we do, with way more flourishes for the bass guitar part – and a funky prog-rock synth solo sandwiched in the middle.

Wake up! Grab a brush and put a little makeup. During a concert by Epic Symphonic Rock, a quartet of cello players (and a dude with a wooden box) jammed out this great sequence of tunes, including a Nirvana medley, Iron Maiden’s The Trooper, and System of a Down’s Chop Suey.

Percussionist Sethdrums likes to add his own rhythmic flair to humorous edits of songs. Here, he takes on The Police’s track Roxanne, but all of the vocals have been deleted except when Sting sings “Rox.” Of course that begged the question, “Where’s Anne?”

Prog rock band Polyphia is known in large part for Tim Henson and Scott LePage’s virtuosic guitar work. Musician Moyun shows us how their track Playing God can take on a whole new texture when performed with precision on the ancient string instrument known as the guzheng.

There I Ruined It is back to demolish another popular song – this time taking on Lady Gaga’s hit song Poker Face, and transforming it into something straight out of Texas in the 1940s. If you’re into steel guitar, fiddle, and jangly old pianos, this one is for you.

The Beatles’ A Day in the Life was one of the most ambitious songs they ever recorded. Musician David Bennett explains how the track was created, then endeavored to replicate it as closely as possible by recording the individual parts and layering them together. That’s Chris Vince on vocals and Zal Jones on drums.

A melodica is a combination of wind and a keyboard instrument. Vinheteiro is used to performing on piano, but he couldn’t be bothered to blow into his melodica, and he hired a shop vac assistant to provide the wind. We wonder what other wind instruments you could do this with and still produce anything resembling music.

Musician Peter Bence has wowed us before with his masterful melding of piano playing and digital looping. Here, he shows how it’s possible to play a complicated piece of music that would normally require four hands, but his high-tech Steinway player piano takes over half of the keyboard once he gets going.

There are lots of cover bands out there, but it’s not often their performances rise to the level of the originals. The Lexington Lab Band is one of those rare musical groups that crushes every single cover they play. Their YouTube channel is packed with classics like Ride Like the Wind, Give a Little Bit, Hot for Teacher, and Ironic.

Musician Luna Lee turns in another great performance on her gayageum, letting her fingers fly across all 18 strings with a cover of the Bob Marley and the Wailers classic I Shot the Sheriff. Luna’s brings a whole new flavor to the track through her expressive improvisation skills.

At the 2022 Mountbatten Festival of Music. The Bands of HM Royal Marines performed an epic medley of music by The Prodigy. Arranged by Band Corporal Aaron Pitman, the set included Out of Space, Breathe, Omen, No Good (Start the Dance), The Day is My Enemy, and Voodoo People, but sadly no Smack My Bitch Up or Firestarter.

The DragonForce track Through the Fire and Flames is known for its impossibly fast chord progressions and blister-inducing appearance in Guitar Hero III. The Morander Brothers turned in a flawless cover version of the song, performed on a pair of accordions. Their cover of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper is just as impressive.

The members of The Main Squeeze and their guest musicians present a stellar performance of the Pink Floyd classic Comfortably Numb. They captured the mood and emotion of the original while adding a soulful new dimension, thanks to the fantastic lead vocals by Corey Frye and killer guitar work of Maximillian Newman.

Despite its eclectic nature, there’s one thing you can count on with Radiohead’s music – it will always be evocative. YouTuber CmcBkT put together this hilarious, meme-filled edit of the emotional rollercoaster ride you’ll be in for if you play your Radiohead collection on shuffle. Part two here.

The Foo Fighters’ tune Everlong is damned near perfect the way it was recorded back in 1997. But if you slow it down to just the right speed, it might even be better. Maybe it’s just that we get to enjoy the song a little longer, but ARK’s speed-adjusted version of the track is simply stellar.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows was some of their most experimental and best work. Now you can listen to the album as if it was the soundtrack to Super Mario 64. On4word created this amazing interpretation of the entire album using the game’s soundfont. It’s available as a pay-what-you-want download on Bandcamp.