Awesome Covers

Turn up your speakers to 11 and scream at the top of your lungs to this re-upload of Leo Moracchioli’s excellent 2016 metal cover version of The Cranberries’ classic Zombie. It’s loud, intense, and apropos of the blood-boiling things going on in the world at the moment.

From 2010 to 2017, The Onion’s A.V. Club invited musicians to cover songs from a list of diminishing choices as the season went on. This amazing collection vanished a few years back, but has resurfaced on the YouTube channel Alvin Untercover. Bands include TMBG, GWAR, Punch Brothers, and more. Watch ’em before they’re gone again!

Musician Seb Skelly turns The Human League’s 1981 new wave hit Don’t You Want Me? into a jazz tune, performing all five parts of his arrangement for brass quintet. We sort of miss the synthesizers, but Seb’s version is pretty great too.

The last time we checked in with German oompah band The Heimatdamisch, they were playing G N’ R’s Sweet Child ‘O Mine. This time, they turned the AC/DC track Highway to Hell into a festive polka, but not before trying to convince us that it was a regular rock cover.

It might not have 512 floppy drives, but the Device Orchestra has plenty of heart (and googly eyes). So crank up the volume, and get your day started right with a performance of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now that will have you buzzing like an electric toothbrush.

It was just yesterday that we paid our respects to Floppotron 2.0. As we hoped, Paweł Zadrożniak was at work building an even bigger and better electromechanical band. Floppotron 3.0 has 512 floppy disk drives, 16 hard disks, and four flatbed scanners for a richer and fuller sound than its predecessors.

Paweł Zadrożniak’s electromechanical orchestra has entertained millions with over 120 covers of popular songs. Now, the Floppotron 2.0 is being retired, and Paweł is sending it off with a performance of Andrea Bocelli’s Con Te Partirò, and there’s not a dry eye in the house. We’re hoping he’s just making room for Floppotron 3.0.

Whenever we go to a mall, the music they’re playing is some kind of canned garbage designed to make you spend more money. But these shoppers were treated to something way better – pianist Glaucio Cristelo, who played an epic cover of Foo Fighters’ Everlong. His channel is filled with many more great performances.

Tenacious D’s 2022 covers-for-charity song is a trio of classics by The Who – Pinball Wizard, There’s A Doctor, and Go To The Mirror! Jack and Kyle bring their usual mix of humor and melodrama to the medley, which is available on streaming platforms, and an exclusive 7″ single, with proceeds going to Everytown for Gun Safety.

Puddles Pity Party takes on haters and trolls by doing what he does best – singing away the pain. His mashup of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and The Police track Driven to Tears is the perfect combination of madness and sorrow for the Sad Clown with the Golden Voice.

Here’s an oldie but a goodie. Back in 2011, the members of MercyMe performed this exuberant cover of The Beatles’ classic Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da in a very long hallway. Along the way, they got by with a little help from their friends.

Despite their very different sounds, The Beatles and Muse have at least a couple of things in common – they’re both English and both have filled large stadiums. Andre Antunes finds more middle ground between the two bands with this great performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps done in Matt Bellamy’s grand style.

We suppose that a frog who dates a pig is a bit of a weirdo, so it only makes sense that Kermit would want to sing the Radiohead track Creep. This tasty morsel of Internet eccentricity comes to us courtesy of singer Rich Alvarez.

The members of 40 Fingers are back with another wonderful guitar performance. This time, they took on two classic compositions from John Williams’ Star Wars catalog, including the Main Theme and epic Emperor’s March, imbuing the tracks with their richly-layered acoustic sound.

Musician Leo Moracchioli is known for his heavy metal covers of pop music. We guess the classic singalong Row, Row, Row Your Boat is as popular as kids’ songs get. So Leo and his puppet avatar got down to business to give us the most metal version they could come up with. Life is but a dream, woooooooooooah!

A rambling, improvisational style is a trademark of jazz saxophone great John Coltrane’s sound, making them notoriously difficult for others to perform. Listen as harmonica player Cy Leo shows off his incredible breath control as he keeps perfect time with a passage from Coltrane’s 1960 classic Giant Steps.