Hurt by Johnny Cash
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
49 points (98.0% liked)
Asklemmy
54964 readers
595 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
Maphra
Thunderstruck by Walk Off the Earth. Female vocalist, a wild twist on instuments that just seems to work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RnGkIxhFGU
Joe Jacksons cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh, Well" rocks! The Ramones cover of the old 1960's Spiderman TV theme song was excellent! Nancy Griffith's cover of "Tecumseh Valley" by Townes Van Zandt always leaves a lump in my throat.
I wanna be like you (jungle book) by psychedelic porn crumpets. Give it a try, it's good.
Sultans of Swing (metal cover by Leo Moracchioli feat. Mary Spender)
Cover - check
Popular song - check
From 80s or 90s - check
Redone into metal - check
Female vocalist - check!
Bonus song: Manhattan Skyline by Ihsahn feat. Einar Solberg
It's not harder than the original, but Ihsahn and Einar are some of the most influential metal musicians out there
Please Don't Touch by Motorhead/Girl School
Originally recorded in 1959 by Johnny Kid and the Pirates
Nirvana version of "where did you sleep last night"
Their cover of "Lake of Fire" is also good (though the original is great on its own)
Placebo's version of Running up that Hill is the definitive version. Fight me.
Agreed. I also like their cover of Where's My Mind.
I used to agree. But I heard so little of the Kate Bush version, that when stranger things used it. I like her version better now
Covers of popular songs
Okay...
from the 80s or 90s
...ah, fuck. Yeah, the original is from 2013 ๐
redone today into a hard rock or metal version.
Check!
Bonus if it's a female vocalist.
Well, 2 out of 3 is good enough: Take Me to Church by The Agonist
The band Tragedy started out as a heavy metal BeeGees cover band, I believe, but expanded to do hard rock covers of disco, pop, and adult contemporary staples. I'm not a big Abba fan but I love every one of this band's covers and their cover of Madonna's Borderline.
Boys of Summer - The Ataris
Don Henley's version is nice, but this early 00s power pop version hits so good.
That's actually sort of why I made this thread is because of that cover
The Shrek 2 'fairy godmother' cover of I Need a Hero is far more enjoyable than the original one imo.
Others that come to mind have already been listed here..
Country roads.
Hurt - Johnny Cash
GWAR did a cover of Pink Pony Club
It's infinitely better to the original. I known it's a new song. I don't care.
My favorite is in the opposite direction - Porter Robinson covering Fontaines DC "favorite" in a 90s pop rock style. Such a good version of such a good song, and it's worth reading the interview where he talks about recording it.
I know it's probably not what you're asking for but there's an album where a bunch of Japanese anime voice actresses did covers for popular songs from the 80s and 90s. It called Voice Actresses Legendary Punk Songs Collection and here's a playlist that has most of the songs (one of them is unavailable for some reason).
Outside of that, I mostly only know bands who have covers of video game music (and some movies) from the 80s and 90s. If you are counting those, here are some examples of them:
Lighting Strikes Again and Metal Squad from Thunder Force IV by SSH. SSH is known for metal covers of old video game music, so this is just one example of his music.
Cranial Syphon by Armcannon, which is a cover of some song from Metroid but I'm not familiar with that game so I don't know what it is exactly. On top of covers for other video game music, they also have stuff like the Ghostbuster's theme.
Kraid by Metroid Metal, which is obviously another metroid song (possibly the same one). There music was a bit hard to find on YouTube, I've forgotten where I first heard their music before but Youtube might not be the best platform to find the rest of their music.
Battle Scene from Final fantasy by The Black Mages. While they are currently disbanded, they were known for rock/metal covers of music from the Final Fantasy games (which makes sense given that the band was created by Nobuo Uematsu himself). They did briefly rebrand as "Earthbound Papas" for one album because not only did they want to cover more than just the Final Fantasy games but they also wanted to branch out to more genres.
I know for sure that there are some that I'm forgetting and there's also some that I don't feel like looking for examples for (mainly artists who've covered the music from the 90s era Touhou games). If asked, I may do through and provide them but I think I've provided more than enough already.
Anything by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
The Protomen - The Cover Up
I really like this cover of Dead Man's Party
And for some Metal, as you requested, Everytime We Touch
Yes Sir, I can Boogie as performed by The Fratellis. The original was from the 70's but I'm told people liked it.
GnR's Sympathy for the Devil is better than the original
Right round by Dope.
Absolute banger just no female singer.
Could have a look through the punk goes pop albums too there's some good stuff in there
I know there's a whole anti cars movement but I think it's a pretty good cover
Tune!
Puddle of Mud has a nice Nirvana cover
I never found a metal rendition of a 'softer' song that's better than the original so I got nothing on that.
But here's few of some artis I follow.
Eleanor Rigby - Josh Turner I think most of the song he cover is old (idk I don't really listen to classic song). But good lord, he's talented af.
Jack Conte (CEO of Patreon) are on both of these. Pomplamoose is his band with his wife Nataly Dawn.
Scary pockets brings different singer (and other instrument) each song, mostly funk forward.
Just the 2 of us - Scary Pockets
If you like those two, you probably also like Lawrence
This is just straight up jazz but they're super good. Young Original - Its a lovely day today
The standouts for me are A Perfect Circle doing covers of People are People by Depeche Mode and Peace, Love, and Understanding by Brinsley Schwarz.
The A.V. Club used to do a series where bands would come on and choose from a list of songs to cover. As the season goes on, the list shrinks and the covers get more exotic. You can search "av undercover" on YouTube to watch through the back catalog of old seasons for some pretty great covers. I don't think they do it anymore, but it ran for several years.
view more: next โบ