I’m always impressed by bands that nail these one-time cover sessions, like the BBC Live Lounge, AV Undercover, or, in this case, Triple J’s long-running “Like a Version” series in Australia. The band has a knack for lacing deep, aching lyrics with deceptively cheery instrumentation, and this skill paid off for their cover of Bey’s “All Night.” While no one can top any of Beyonce’s original productions on Lemonade, Local Natives’ earnest approach to the ballad makes the acoustic cover stand out among the millions of stripped-down homages. Local Natives – All Nightĭespite a streaming market saturated with sunny indie pop, LA-based Local Natives have managed to stay fresh. Time will tell whether he can convince his current bandmates in Dead & Co. He gives the lyrics his signature “sensitive-guy” spin and sings with such sincerity that you would think he wrote the track himself. In 2014, John Mayer cracked the pop charts with this cover of Beyoncé’s “XO.” He transformed her original into a production in line with his trademark style, with harmonica and acoustic guitar. It’s a bold step away from her main axe, and a successful one – though I’d kind of like to hear her tackle a harp Beyoncé cover now too. Instead, it’s dark and aggressive electropop for a late night on the streets of Berlin. You wouldn’t deduce her classical training from her pounding “Run the World” cover, though a harp is nowhere to be found to these ears. Lidwine de Royer is a French harpist who has recorded beautiful plucked covers of pop stars like Sia (hitting those “Chandelier” high notes with a huge harp leaning on you seems no easy feat). The frenetic energy of the track makes you want to sneak into a speakeasy and do the Charleston with that fine flapper across the room. The ensemble reworked Beyoncé’s famed dance grooves with blazing horns, a devilishly-inspired banjo, and clickity-clack percussion reminiscent of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five recordings. In 2013, the group went a step further and tapped British vocalist Emeli Sandé for a jazz-age makeover of “Crazy in Love” for the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. Roxy Music lead singer Bryan Ferry founded the orchestra that bears his name to reinterpret his own songs like jazz tunes from the Roaring ‘20s. The Bryan Ferry Orchestra – Crazy in Love It would rank even higher, except I can’t say I think much of his lyrical changes. Similar to “Dirty Diana,” it’s a dark and wonderfully layered production underpinning his lilting falsetto. “Drunk in Love” came more recently, when he was already fully ensconsed in megastar status. The Weeknd’s “Dirty Diana” cover topped our best-of-list, back when Abel Tesfaye was a semi-anonymous enigma dropping mysterious mixtapes online. He treats it like a deeply personal story and song instead of an answer to the unlikely question of what would happen if a Norwegian crooner covered Beyoncé. Finally, the song doesn’t devolve to irony or novelty, because Lerche finds new ways of singing it throughout its three minutes. Though some of the gender stuff feels a little homophobic, a deeper listen reveals some interesting stuff that re-narrativizes the song, and Lerche never shies away from lyrics that might make him sound silly. But it’s also a rendition that reveals how the original doesn’t need flair or digital wizardry to be a good song. It draws a ton of attention to gender-swapping pronouns – and additional words like “shorty” and “chick” – in ways that come close to making me uncomfortable. Norwegian crooner Sondre Lerche’s cover of “Countdown” – my favorite Beyoncé song and it’s not really close – is perhaps tender to the point of being ironic. So let’s start the countdown (heh) of the best B covers ever. I challenge you to find another list on the internet containing both serpentwithfeet and Reba McEntire. Appropriately enough, the artists doing the covering represent an equally wide spectrum. And every other facet of her career is represented, from the Destiny’s Child radio hits to her early solo pop jams to the more recent political tracks from Lemonade and beyond. There aren’t any Everything Is Love songs covered here, but we can’t imagine the first great “Apeshit” cover is far off. In tribute, we’re writing this entire post from the Louvre. So it was extra nice of her to drop a surprise album with her husband, what’s-his-name, to give us something else to tie this into. Okay, maybe that’s not the only Beyoncé news setting the internet aflutter these days – but it is the reason we initially decided to do this list. We all know the reason everyone’s talking about Beyoncé this month: It’s the fifteenth anniversary of her debut solo album Dangerously in Love!
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