I think this is a stupendous idea. Here are mine, in no particular order.
- "One More Try"-George Michael
I just really like George Michael is all. I'm currently working on a rockabilly cover of this one.
- "Shake it Out"-Florence + The Machine
Or "Never Let Me Go" or "Cosmic Love" or "Dog Days are Over." I love Flo-Mo, but so much of the band's charm is wrapped up in Florence Welch's unique voice and the band's interesting instrumentation, with accordions and harps and so on. I'd like to hear a straightforward rock/power pop version of one of the hits.
- "Valentine"-Old 97s
This is an extremely simple country/rock song that begs to be sung by three guys around a campfire. In a just world, every middle school band would cover this one instead of "Wonderwall."
- "The Weekenders"-The Hold Steady
I'm not a The Hold Steady fan at all. I tried as hard as I could to get into them, but nothing took, except this song. It's kinetic, it's got momentum, and I love love love singing along with it. My favorite song lyrics sound like prose that just happen to fit a rhythmic structure, and this song does that so well. You just get to the chorus and it feels like you're running down a steep hill and the vocal track is dragging you, like gravity, slightly faster than you want to go.
- "Amie"-Damien Rice
I'm an extremely sad person, and I consume music and fiction in large part so I can experience sadness through other people's eyes and feel pain through the lens of other people's experience. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only person who wakes up and often as not wants to lock himself outside in the snow and sit there until I freeze to death. It's why I like The National and Elliott Smith and Graham Greene and Richard Ford.
Anyway, this is a very sad, very pretty song with a very nice violin part, and I like it a lot.
- "Islands in the Stream"-Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
All I want in life is for someone to sing this with me at karaoke. If I weren't married already, I'd marry the woman who'd sing the Dolly Parton part with me at karaoke.
- "Give It To Me"-Timbaland ft. Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake
All the backing parts are so simple, the vocals are fun--it's just a perfectly-constructed piece of danceable music. I bet a below-average four-piece band could arrange and learn a cover within two hours and turn any venue they play into a sex cave the same night.
- "Hang Me Up to Dry"-Cold War Kids
I adore this song. I love that it's entirely unsubtle. I love that it's an extended metaphor about laundry and heartbreak. I love that it sounds like you could play it with construction equipment after consuming half a case of Schlitz. I want to get on a stage with a group of people and just jackhammer the shit out of this song.
- "Peace of Mind"-Boston
This is the dream. If I practiced guitar nonstop for about three years, I bet it would be unimaginably fun to start a Boston cover band.
- "Alone"-Heart
I love a good power ballad, and this is one of the best. Glee (I know, I know, but bear with me) did this really well as a duet once upon a time, and all it made me want to do was find some absolute diva of a lady vocalist and construct a band around her.
- "Thunder Road"-Bruce Springsteen
Or "Born to Run" or "Badlands" or "I'm Going Down" or any more standard Springsteen song. I'm from New Jersey and I'm a sportswriter so I can't help it.
- "Sweet Escape"-Gwen Stefani ft. Akon
This is a pop song that translates really, really well to a five-piece rock band. The rhythm guitar part and vocals play well enough together on their own that I bet this would work as an acoustic solo bit, but get a good drummer and a good guitarist and the cover could grow beyond the original boundaries of the song.
- "I'll Believe in Anything"-Wolf Parade
Change the keyboards to accordion or distorted guitar, pick up the tempo a little bit...I love the lyrics and the shift from 3/4 to 4/4 at the end.
- "The Good Life"-Weezer
My favorite genre of music is power pop, and Weezer is the best, or at least most, power pop band of the past 20 years. This could be any one of a dozen songs from the Blue Album or Pinkerton, but "The Good Life" features a chorus that allows you to really relish saying "shakin' booty," which I think is important in a cover set.
- "The Fallen"-Franz Ferdinand
The band I was in in college toyed with this one for a while, but we never put it together for a show. I love the back-and-forth of the guitar parts, the relentless drive of the bass and the up-and-at-'em vocals. I don't know if it'd be particularly popular with an audience, but I bet this song is fun as hell to play live.
