Jun 072019
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Don't You Want Me Covers

The Human League created many hits throughout the ’80s and ’90s in the UK, but “Don’t You Want Me” is the one that most successfully gained popularity across the pond. Philip Oakey first recorded this song by himself, but he promoted backup vocalist, Susan Ann Sulley, to the role of co-lead, creating the duet we know and love.

To those less familiar with The Human League’s full discography, this song might be considered a one-hit wonder. However, the song has a wide influence, uniting music fans across genres and demographics. We have the ladies of The Human League to thank for inspiring Posh Spice to “wannabe” in a musical group. The song’s synthesizer pop style is so catchy, even Pitbull sampled it. Sports fans rally behind this song too; “Don’t You Want Me” enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in 2014 when fans of the Aberdeen Football Club made a push to get the song back on the UK Singles Chart.

It’s surprisingly hard to find covers that don’t start with the same intro synth beat as the original, but these five covers break from the mold.

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Apr 012019
 
best cover songs march
Amaara – House of Cards (Radiohead cover)

We just posted the 45 best Radiohead covers ever, but there’s already a 46th. Unsurprising, really, considering how much this band gets covered. The musical project of actor Kaelen Amara Ohm, Amaara took on the In Rainbows gem “House of Cards.” Her cover carries echoes of the haunting original, but with a smoother electro-ambient sheen.

Chris Anderson – Eh-Hee / Digging in the Dirt (Dave Matthews / Peter Gabriel cover)

Composer Chris Anderson draws from some pretty deep wells of music knowledge on his new Song Cycle. He covers Laurie Anderson and John Cage and Tom Waits – twice. He covers Peter Gabriel twice too, on a beautiful “Mercy Street” and more subtly here, working bits of “Digging in the Dirt” into – of all things – a gospel Dave Matthews cover. “The addition of a choir was important to me to create the feeling of a ground-swell of support,” he writes in an email. “The fact that the song is about ‘knocking the devil to his knees’ made the gospel choir a natural choice.” Continue reading »