I've been thinking a lot about covers lately.

Not the front of CDs. But musicians doing other people's songs.

There are some recent covers; some good, some bad.

The good: Gnarls Barkley doing The Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone." The bad: Slaves On Dope's version of "Crazy" by Seal.

That one's just awful.

But what makes a good cover?

Doing a note-for-note copy of the original lacks any reason for doing the cover. Stray too far and you've insulted the song. So I guess the formula is for the artist to "make it their own" as I'm sure has been said tons of times.

The choice of song plays a big part. It has to play to the strengths of the singer/band. Take Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." It's just perfect.

Sometimes bands pick more obscure tracks and retool them to the point that people say "I love that new ---- song!" Pearl Jam's "Last Kiss" is a prime example.

Jump on any search engine and look for best/worst covers lists. There are tons out there. There are endless choices and tastes to judge them.

Changing the genre of a song can really work sometimes. Unless you metallify (so it's not a word, so what) or hard-rock inject a song. I tend not to like those as much. Although, with some thought I'm sure I could think of some rocking rockified covers.

Like Me First And The Gimme Gimmes. Those guys are great. In case you don't know, they do punk covers of non-punk songs. Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time" being one that I've been listening to a lot.

So let's wrap it up with some of my favorite covers:
Frente doing New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle"
Rufus Wainright's version of "Across The Universe" by The Beatles
Travis covering Britney Spears' "Baby, One More Time" (they turn it into a good song)
The aforementioned Jeff Buckley song
Nada Surf doing "If You Leave" by OMD
The Who's "My Generation" as performed by Oasis

I'm sure I'll think of more later....