Welcome to the third installment in our Best Cover Songs of Yesteryear countdown, where we act like we were compiling our usual year-end list from a year before we – or the internet – existed. Compared to the first two, this one has significantly less grunge than 1996 and less post-punk than 1987. It’s hard to have post-punk, after all, before you have punk, a new genre starting to hit its peak in 1978. And don’t forget the other big late-’70s sound: disco. Both genres were relatively new, and super divisive among music fans. Lucky for us, both genres were also big on covers.
Disco, in particular, generated some hilariously ill-advised cover songs. We won’t list them all here – this is the Best 1978 covers, not the Most 1978 covers. If you want a taste (and think carefully about whether you really do), this bonkers take on a Yardbirds classic serves as a perfect example of what a good portion of the year’s cover songs looked and sounded like:
Don’t worry: It gets better. Though not necessarily all that much less nutty. So take a deep breath and dive into the disco/punk insanity of 1978 covers. Starting, appropriately enough, with the single most divisive cover song ever recorded…
Update June 18: Hear an hour-long discussion about this list on SiriusXM Volume on Soundcloud or the SiriusXM app on-demand.
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