Counting down the top 40 covers as nominated and voted on by Coverville listeners. This is it! In this episode, we countdown your top ten. Plus, find out how you can win a copy of TuneUp!
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Counting down the top 40 covers as nominated and voted on by Coverville listeners. This is it! In this episode, we countdown your top ten. Plus, find out how you can win a copy of TuneUp!
Featuring:
Subscribe: (MP3 feed) | (AAC feed)
Haven’t listened yet – I listen at work – but I must say:
1. interesting power of what I guess one would call the classics -33, 27, 12 and 9, and arguably others
2. a real yo-yo of mood from 3 to 2 to 1; I nominated and voted for 1 and 2 – yay!
3. SPRINGSTEEN is most covered; did not see that coming.
Is it possible to Hall Of Fame Johnny Cash? 🙂
Great to hear Gin and Juice again after a while – maybe this year we can see Bitches Ain’t S**t (Ben Folds) and Straight Out of Compton (Nina Gordon) again?
Great set of covers again. But I have to say I am AMAZED that the recently played Golden Slumbers by the Nenad Bach Band did not feature at all in the top 40 – this was the one from the Beatles Double Shot show that Power-popped the song with a great new tempo, almost creating a whole new song – just what Coverville is about!
The top ten this year were rather uninspiring. Pomplamoose is great, but the rest of these are old news. Natalie Merchant and Petra Hayden’s voices still get on my nerves, and Thompson’s “Ups” cover is still a novelty at best.
Maybe next year we need a more limited rule on what can be nominated. It seems like leaving nominations open to “any cover ever recorded” makes the countdown just a four-part mob-rule all request show.
You say “a four-part mob-rule all request show” as if that were somehow a bad thing!
(I would actually have pegged Pomplamoose as the least inspiring part of the list, and was extremely gratified to see The Mercy Seat at #2, so, you know, opinions differ. As they should!)
I would say that both of the Pomplamoose songs, the Gourds song, and Kamakawiwo’ole are all ready to be retired to the hall of fame. Same with the Petra Hayden ones, Scola ones, and anything from Johnny Cash.
I think that maybe there should be a way to grandfather a lot of the classic covers into the hall of fame as well. Songs like Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower, Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”, The Animals “House of the Rising Sun”, Clapton’s “I Shot the Sherriff”, “Istanbul” by They Might Be Giants and so on. They are all classic in their own right and often equally or more famous than the originals. We shouldn’t have them in the countdown. Perhaps there can be a Coverville hall of fame episode every summer where classic ones are elevated to the Hall and a countdown in December to show off new ones.
I love seeing this discussion, and as should be obvious from the years of the show, I listen to user feedback and implement the things that improve your experience as a listener.
We could easily “double” the countdown, and make the year-end list a top 20 of just covers that came out this year, and in the summer, have a different kind of countdown. Maybe this year, it’s the “20 Best Covers of All Time”, and have stuff like Aretha’s “Respect”, Sinead’s “Nothing Compares…”, Hendrix’ “Watchtower”, etc. Maybe next year, it would be the “Best Covers From Movie Soundtracks”, or something like that.
Just a thought.
I like the idea of the best songs that came out in 2011 or were first played in 2011 on Coverville as the year end show, even though it may mean that Nenad Bach Band cover not appearing!
The idea too of a separate summer “best covers of all time” vote is good.
As an extra idea, you could turn the result into a PR piece to send to the media – look at all those awful “best covers” polls that come out – your list however would have tremendous respectability as you are the king of covers and I would say that Covervillians are the best choice as to what makes a great cover. If you could get this into the major media outlets, it might boost numbers a lot!
This in itself might create some advertising or sponsorship opportunities maybe.
Wayne
Re: Oops/Ups being a “novelty at best” — There’s just something terribly compelling about someone turning a tune you’d never choose to listen to … into something you want to listen to. That one went on my shopping list.
On the contrary side… while listening to the Coverville Countdown this year, I found myself thinking of the annual WCBS-FM Top 500 Countdown, also based on a listener survey, which used to run every Thanksgiving weekend, and how it was filled with old favorites, and how much I always loved it. I don’t agree that confining the list to new covers would be an improvement; I think having a few episodes at the end of the year dominated by beloved classics with a sprinking of new ones is ideal. (I was also thinking that it would be nice to have an all Hall-of-Fame episode before the Countdown ones…)
Mind you, a separate countdown of new covers could be fun, too! But I see that more as the side show than the main event.
“Because the Night” arguably should be Springsteen, pop. Patti Smith. Heard the Springsteen version on The Promise, and boy you can really tell it is his song when he does it. Patti’s version was great, but…
I think that confining the end of year countdown to only the last year may be too restrictive. There are a lot of covers that hang around in the background for a while before being picked up later by people. This is especially true of small independant bands who may have a song on youtube or something for years until they have a hit and people go back to their older stuff.
I think the best solution is for a greatest of all time show seperate from the countdown. That would allow Brian to elevate songs like Aretha’s Respect or Gaye’s heard it through the grapevine etc. from the countdown and allow for lesser known ones to gain exposure. Not having a song on the scale of those classic covers in the hall of fame is silly but do we really want to have to hear Aretha’s version for three years before she gets the same honor that Shatner got? That seems ludicris.
I nominated several of those “classic” covers on the theory that they should be reflected in the Hall of Fame of the premier covers podcast of all time. I’m strongly in favor of a greatest covers of all time vote and show. The winners could automatically go into the Hall of Fame. I’ve always thought it strange that Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower”, the Clash’s “Police and Thieves”, Talking Heads “Take Me to the River”, Credence Clearwater Revival “Heard It Through the Grapevine”, etc., etc., etc. aren’t in the Hall of Fame.
Oh, and I voted for Thompson’s “Oops I Did It Again” in lieu of one of my own noms. I love that cover.
As a relatively new listener (~1 year) some of these covers were new to me. I purchased several songs off of this list because I liked them and it was the first time I’d heard them. Valerie, Take me to the River, and Don’t Fear the Reaper. While I can see the call for more obscure covers in a countdown like this, I think Brian is already doing a good job inserting those in the weekly cover stories between the indie hodgepodge and listener request shows. Finding covers for some of deeper cuts on albums is pretty much guaranteed to pull up obscure covers too. In general I like the way things are working now, popular songs on the Annual Countdown that are getting overplayed graduate to the Hall of Fame. So consider this a vote for, “you’re doing a great job and keep up the good work Brian!”.