“Blue Monday” is a New Order song from 1983.

New Order’s "Blue Monday" Played with Obsolete 1930s Instruments https://t.co/U5yvQscniC pic.twitter.com/3MFBK1voRC

— Open Culture (@openculture) June 2, 2021

Black Sabbath recorded “Paranoid” in 1970. Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox just covered it.

Mariachi band cover version

“To Be Alone With You” is a Bob Dylan country song from Nashville Skyline (1969). Eli Paperboy Reed just covered it in honor of Dylan’s 80th birthday.

Bob Dylan is 80 today. That’s hard to believe. Rolling Stone and Variety each compiled a list of the 80 best Dylan covers. I’m going to focus on the Basement Tapes songs from 1967. Dylan did a demo of 14 songs that were covered by other artists. The most famous is Manfred Mann’s version of “Mighty Quinn”. Seven of Dylan’s recordings were on the first major bootleg, Great White Wonder.

The Band released three Basement tapes songs on their first album, Music from Big Pink. Two had been co-written with Band members.

an album of Dylan covers including seven Basement Tapes songs:

Lo and Behold – Coulson, Dean, McGuinness, Flint, McGuiness Flint (1972)

I thought about posting about “Viva Las Vegas” because of the version used in the new film Army of the Dead. The original version is by Elvis Presley. I was shocked to read that he never performed it live.

It was done as “Viva Viagra” in a commercial and “Viva Rock Vegas” in a Flintstones movie.

I watched A.K.A. Doc Pomus about the author of the lyrics – he hadn’t been to Las Vegas!

Ronstadt also covered multiple songs by Karla Bonoff. Bonoff didn’t have near the recording career Warren Zevon did so Ronstadt’s versions are the only ones most people know.

Linda Ronstadt did a lot to bring Warren Zevon’s songs to a wider audience. Her covers are probably the best known version of some of his songs. His albums were too quirky for mainstream acceptance. I prefer his versions but I am glad she recorded his songs.

This is a list of covers of Zevon songs.

A savage critique of indulgent 70’s folk and the funniest song ever written about ending it all, Warren Zevon’s “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me” marries a killer riff to a master class in poor judgment, culminating in rock’s first effort at taking the 5th: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

— The Paranoid Style (@paranoiacs) January 19, 2022

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Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long” was on his 1980 album Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. There’s a great cover by the Drive-By Truckers which to me is far better than the original. The song is about Lynyrd Skynyrd which makes it a natural for the Truckers since they were often compared to Skynyrd. It’s an avalance of guitars which reminds me more of Neil Young than Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s on an album of leftovers but I saw them play it live so it wasn’t just an afterthought.

Randy Newman’s 1977 song “Baltimore” conveyed a downbeat but realistic image of the city to me. The most famous cover is by Nina Simone.