Cover Wars: New Year’s Day Edition
Welcome to a new year of Cover Wars. I could think of no better cover tune for the occasion than this 1983 U2 classic. New Year’s Day has quite the resume appearing in both Rolling Stone’s and Pitchfork’s Top 500 songs of all-time. We’ve got a good collection of covers this week, one of which was played just a couple of days ago, so enjoy and don’t forget to vote at the bottom.
The Contestants:
Though this was not the first time The Dresden Dolls covered this song, it certainly is the most recent. The band put together quite the New Year’s Eve setlist this year for their show at The Warfield in San Francisco. There is of course, the celebratory sounds of balloons being popped on the recording. Source: 12-31-2010
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Video of the performance:
READ ON for more covers of New Year’s Day.
Canadian band Front Line Assembly teamed up with pop singer Tiffany to record this cover for the 1999 album We Will Follow: A Tribute to U2. Certainly the most unique take on the song this week.
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No audio for you for this performance, but a good video of Jack’s Mannequin performing in February of 2010:
moe. performed this vibraphone-heavy cover at their NYE 2007 show at Radio City Music Hall. Though technically this cover and that of The Dresden Dolls were played on New Year’s Day, we still have to cite the date of the show as 12-31 because that’s when the concert began. Smokey this is not ‘Nam. This is Cover Wars. There are rules. Source: 12-31-2007
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A fuzzy video to accompany the audio embedded above:
And for our last cover we’ve got this track from guitarist Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple) which appears on An All-Star Salute To Christmas.
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Checking in on the Ain’t No Sunshine Cover Wars, the rendition by Jennifer Hartswick & Umphrey’s McGee has emerged victorious.
