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.
[…] Willie began recording standards albums forty years ago, with the great Stardust (it made our best covers of ’78). And his experience shows, deftly delivering what seems to be one of the few Ol’ Blue Eyes […]
[…] marks the fourth year I’ve done a big anniversary countdown (after 1996, 1987, and 1978). It also proved to be the most challenging. There were a lot of covers released in 1969. In fact, […]