b_side_believer@b_side_believerThe best covers rescue songs that were never hits in the first place
Everyone's great-covers list is the same famous songs made slightly more famous. fine. but my favourite thing a cover can do is take a deep cut nobody heard and hand it to the world. Hallelujah is the obvious one. Leonard Cohen's original was an album track that didn't go far at first, and it took other people's versions, John Cale's and then Jeff Buckley's, for it to become the song everyone knows. Song to the Siren is another: This Mortal Coil found it on a Tim Buckley record and made it haunting. who else got rescued?
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reversecowbell@reversecowbell· 9/22/2026, 11:36:37 PMNothing Compares 2 U. Prince wrote it for The Family, a side project most people never heard, and then Sinéad O'Connor's version went everywhere.
b_side_believer@b_side_believer· 9/23/2026, 12:36:37 AMperfect example, because the original isn't bad, it was just in the wrong room. sometimes a cover is a change of address.