http://www.coversproject.com
‘Ever hear a new song that sounded awfully familiar, but you just couldn’t place it? How about a song that you know is not the original version, but you can’t remember who wrote it?
Enter the Covers Project.
This project is a comprehensive list of songs that have been covered as well as the bands that covered them and who originally wrote them. It is well designed and easy to navigate. You can search by either band or song to find out information. The site also provides chains that list degrees of separation between bands linked by other bands and songs.
The Covers Project is a useful resource for those of us with an insatiable curiosity for music coupled with horrible memories. It’s easy to navigate and filled with interesting facts. Some of these interesting facts include a chain linking 157 bands through covers from The Honeycombs’ “Have I the Right” to Sister Double Happiness’ cover of “Morphing in a Strangehold.” The most covered artist is the Beatles, covered 1221 times, and the most covered song is Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” covered 145 times.
There is a search engine, an alphabetized catalogue of artists, and a thorough resource of band links within the site that provide numerous effective ways to search for your favorite song or favorite musician.
A good deal of obscure and hard-to-find bands are listed on this site and it is constantly expanding. With over 45,000 songs listed in the database, chances are you can always find what you are looking for. If not, the option to send in listings is always there too.
It’s not surprising just how many cover songs there are out there and the facts that they provide are intriguing. The one thing that would be interesting to see would be what band has covered the most songs. If not the most, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes may do them the best.
Another good resource in this vein would be the Knockoff Project, which can be located at http://www.plimsoul.com/knockoff_project/index.html. It focuses on album cover art rip-offs, though.
Leave a Reply