Cover Version - Tributes, Tribute Albums and Cover Albums

Tributes, Tribute Albums and Cover Albums

Established artists often pay homage to artists or songs that inspired them before they started their careers or musicians who in some way helped them enter show business by recording their own versions of tunes associated with that artist (See, for example, I Remember Tommy) or performing tunes associated with their favourite influential musician(s) in their own live performances for variety. For example U2 has performed ABBA's "Dancing Queen" live, and Kylie Minogue has performed The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" - songs that would be completely out of character for them to record, but which allow them artistic freedom when performing live. These performances are often released as part of authorised "live recordings".

Since the late twentieth century, unrelated contemporary artists have contributed individual reworkings of tunes to tribute albums for well established artists who are considered to be influential and inspiring. This trend was spawned by Hal Willner's Amarcord Nino Rota in 1981. Typically, each project has resulted in a collection of the particular artist's best recognised or most highly regarded songs reworked by more current performers.

The soundtracks to the films All This and World War II, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I Am Sam and Across the Universe are examples of this: they consisted of Beatles songs redone by various contemporary artists. Other notable examples are Conception: The Interpretation of Stevie Wonder Songs; Common Thread an album of contemporary country artists performing hit singles by the Eagles; the Rhythm, Country and Blues album where a country artist duets with a rhythm and blues artist on a standard of either genre. Two notable tribute albums to the Grateful Dead are Wake the Dead, with Celtic-style covers, and Might As Well, by The Persuasions.

In some cases this proves to be popular enough to spawn a series of cover albums being released for a band, either under a consistent branding such as the two Black Sabbath Nativity in Black cover albums and the industrial themed "Blackest Album" cover albums of Metallica songs, or in the form of releases from a number of different companies cashing in on the trend such as the many Metallica cover albums released in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Metallica itself is known for doing covers; later releases of their original album, Kill 'Em All, included a couple of covers (Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" and Blitzkrieg's "Blitzkrieg"), the original The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited was a collection of covers paying homage to a number of mostly obscure bands, which were later combined with additional new covers on the double album Garage Inc., which among other things included covers of Black Sabbath ("Sabbra Cadabra"), Bob Seger ("Turn the Page"), Blue Öyster Cult ("Astronomy"), Mercyful Fate (a medley of different songs of the band), and numerous Motörhead tracks. In an interesting turn around there were even a couple of releases of The Metallic-era CDs collecting tracks from bands that Metallica had covered, both the original versions of the covered songs, and some additional songs by the same artist.

A different type of all-covers album occurs when one artist creates a release of covers of songs originally by many other artists, as a way to recognize their influences or simply as a change of pace or direction. An early example of this was David Bowie's album Pin Ups, featuring songs from groups with which he had shared venues in the 1960s. Since these bands included The Who and The Kinks many of the tracks would have been at least familiar to his audience. Other more recent examples of this type of album include Renegades by Rage Against the Machine featuring covers of songs originally performed by diverse artists including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Afrikaa Bambaataa, and Erik B and Rakim, as well as the EP Feedback by Canadian rock band Rush. Tori Amos' album Strange Little Girls features covers of songs originally performed by male artists sung from the perspective of thirteen female characters she created (including a rather unexpected version of Slayer's "Raining Blood"). Manfred Mann did albums with more covers than original songs, following the mould of Vanilla Fudge. More rarely, bands will do an entire album of cover songs originally by a particular artist, such as The The's Hanky Panky, which consists entirely of Hank Williams songs, or Booker T. & the M.G.'s' album McLemore Avenue which was a cover of The Beatles' Abbey Road, or Russ Pay's tribute to Manchester legends Joy Division.

There are also bands who create entire albums out of covers, but unlike Tin Pan Alley-style traditional pop singers, they often perform the songs in a genre completely unlike the original songs. Examples include The Moog Cookbook (alternative and classic rock songs done on Moog synthesizers), Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine (top 40, including punk, heavy metal, teen pop and indie rock performed in a Vegas lounge lizard style), and Hayseed Dixie (a play on the name AC/DC, they started covering AC/DC songs and progressed to other classic rock, playing them as bluegrass songs, similar to The Gourds' version of "Gin and Juice".) Also notable are Dread Zeppelin, who take Led Zeppelin songs and cover them in a reggae fashion with the added twist of an Elvis Presley impersonation on the lead vocal; Nine Inch Elvis, who take Elvis Presley songs and rework them in an industrial fashion similar to Nine Inch Nails; and Beatallica, who "mix up" songs from The Beatles and Metallica into Metallica-sounding songs with humorous lyrics referring to both bands' works.

In that same category, The Blues Brothers have recorded only covers on their three most famous albums, Briefcase Full of Blues, Made in America and the motion picture soundtrack The Blues Brothers. They covered blues, R&B, soul, country and rock'n'roll songs, but with their own particular, fresh and raw style of interpretation, a successful blend of the Memphis Stax sound provided by MGs band members Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn, and the New York City sound from the horn section (Alan Rubin and Lou Marini, for example). The outcome sometimes gave a new life to songs. Some became even more popular after The Blues Brothers had played them, than before. The best example is "Soul Man", more remembered as a hit by The Blues Brothers rather than by the original singers, Sam & Dave. The same can be said of "She Caught the Katy" (originally written by Taj Mahal and Yank Rachell) and "Jailhouse Rock" (sung by Elvis Presley) or "Sweet Home Chicago" (Robert Johnson), acknowledging the fact that covers can become even more famous than original performances.

Recent years have seen well-established artists (especially those mostly active in the 1980s) release cover albums, such as Poison (Poison'd!), Tesla (Real to Reel), Queensrÿche (Take Cover) and Def Leppard (Yeah!), revealing a wide range of musical influences.

Some cover albums take the unusual tack of doing classical versions of rock and metal songs. The unusual band Apocalyptica which comprises four classical cellists started out performing classical arrangements of Metallica songs. In a similar vein, there have also been many string quartet tributes to popular rock and metal bands, most notably Tool, Black Sabbath, Breaking Benjamin, New Order/Joy Division, the Cure, Muse, the Beatles, and even Slayer.

One more type of cover album is when a cover of the entire album is done, rather than a collection of songs. A notable band to earn acclaim this way are the Easy Star All-Stars, who covered The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd in their album Dub Side of the Moon and OK Computer by Radiohead in their album Radiodread. Both albums were radical departures from the original albums, being redone in reggae/dub. Another album which radically remade an original album in a new genre is the 2001 Rebuild the Wall, in which Luther Wright and the Wrongs covered the entire double-album The Wall by Pink Floyd as a country/bluegrass piece.

Former Genesis session drummer Nick D'Virgilio covered the band's 1974 concept double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway as 'A Tribute to the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' in 2008. This was released under the name 'Rewiring Genesis'. Unlike the progressive rock original, notable for its prominent synthesizer and guitar work, the cover used a wide variety of instrumentation, including an orchestra, in place of most synthesizer parts and featured jazz-influenced song arrangements. D'Virgilio was session drummer on the Calling All Stations album released in 1996, a year after drummer Phil Collins left Genesis.

Camper Van Beethoven covered Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album in its entirety. Beck's Record Club project has covered The Velvet Underground and Nico, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Oar, Kick, and Yannii Live at the Acropolis by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, Skip Spence, INXS, and Yanni, respectively.