A Few Awesome Cover Songs You Should Know About
When you hear a great song do you ever say to yourself “I wish I could play that” or get an itch to try a few of the chords on an instrument? When I find a melody I enjoy, I try it out on the piano (still in process of learning guitar). I search all over for any copies of music sheets, then start figuring out the melody on the keys. Of course there’s always the Coldplay songs that seem to be the most popular to cover on the piano. How many times have we heard someone play Clocks? I know this, because it’s one of my go-to songs.
As most, I take pleasure in hearing people perform cover songs especially if they do a good job. Even better, I love when an established artist covers another. Last year there were quite a few made, even those that went viral.
For instance when Birdy made the cover of Bon Iver’s Skinny Love. Both versions are beautiful in their own way, Birdy applies the piano to her softer version, where as the original is mostly acoustic guitar with some kick drum.
Another song that came out shortly after was the Goyte song, Somebody That I Use to Know. Then at the beginning of this year on January 5th, a band from Burlington Ontario released their rendition of this song, and blew everyone away with their creativity in this YouTube video. Some even prefer this cover over the original. It quickly gained a million views overnight and as they say, went viral!
How about those solo homemade piano covers? Well, even more recently there was a cover of the Skrillex song featuring Ellie Goulding, Summit, performed by a UCLA student named J. Wang. Skrillex just tweeted the link this morning to Ellie Goulding. It seems as though they both approve of this cover. It’s incredible how she captures the melody through the keys on her piano so flawlessly. Listen for yourself…
compared to the highly digitized sound of the original below…
Now these are all amazing covers, and I know there are some covers out there that we’d rather skip, but it takes a lot of courage for someone to pick up an instrument and give it a try. This creates inspiration to many people, including myself, to challenge ourselves. In very few cases the response could be life-changing (*cough* Bieber). Therefore when I hear some people degrade covers, saying how they are never as good as the original, I would like to point out how covers are not really meant to be exactly like the original song, they should be seen as another persons rendition of the song. It’s important to have an open mind and just enjoy the fun in making music.
I’m looking forward to see what other clever covers are created this year!
