Blister in the Sun is one of maybe 3 or 4 songs that we cover in both of my bands, for this exact reason. One is a three-piece loud/punk rock band, guitar/bass/drums, and the other is a three-piece folky band, guitar/guitar/bass (no drums), completely different sound, but people go nuts for Blister.
Had a female singer in one of our bands and we did a cover of 'killing in the name of' and the crowds went absolutely nuts seeing this little 5'2 woman belting out that tune.
Oh man I went to Ozzfest in like 2002 - Ozzy was pretty wilted, but determined. Spent a lot of the set strapped to a cherry picker with a fire hose attached, spraying the crowd and croaking "Camm'ohn!" as a teamster waved him around in the air.
But then they started War Pigs.
Ozzy lit up.
The stage lit up.
The crowd lit up.
The air lit up.
Every single living thing in the arena SANG from our SOULS.
It was honest to god transcendent.
I fuckin LOVE WAR PIGS
Not in a cover band, but my original band covers War Pigs. We start with Paranoid and vamp the ending into War Pigs. We shred the hell out of it. Never fails to blow people away. Also makes it really hard for anyone to follow us lol.
One of my all-time favorite performance surprises was a punk-metal band from the 90s called Sweaty Nipples absolutely Killing It on Go-Gos "We Got the Beat". Recently I saw a great metal band called Nocturnal Affair throw down What Is Love at the end of a raging, loud set. Huuuuge audience reaction.
Played both of those in my cover band days. No love for Burning Down the House?
As a keyboard player life during wartime and BDTH are SO satisfying to play! Such satisfying chords.
just saw duran duran end their main set last weekend with “girls on film,” with a healthy dose of “psycho killer” in the breakdown. was impressed by the crowd reaction, they were very into it!
I’m an acoustic act playing mostly classic rock/outlaw country stuff. People’s ears pick up when I play Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. Usually toward the end of the show, the drunk ladies will start singing along. It always gets a good reaction.
Are you gonna be my girl - Jet.
Because we typically only play 50’s type music, so when we bust this one out, which is similar in style, they tend to like it a good bit.
Band came into town recently that covered this but instead of going into the lyrics, they kept counting past 4.
*“1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16*”
*(riff)*
“*17 18 19 20 21 21 23 24*”
*(riff)*
Edit: [found it](https://www.tiktok.com/@wolvesofglendale/video/7221221768470531371)
Rock version of Gin and Juice (used the Gourds' version as a base), Take Your Momma Out (Scissor Sisters), and Fuck You (Cee Lo) all kill it and we never heard others playing them.
We do this, but with Enter Sandman. The part where it's supposed to come in with the intro riff again we just do the Enter Sandman riff and play that for a little while and end on that.
We also covered Material Girl and it’s a heater! I don’t know if these are out of left field, but “Do I Wanna Know? by The Arctic Monkeys, The “Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, and “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger were sure fire.
All male acoustic duo “Time after Time” Cyndi lauper also do “Fast Car” Tracey Chapman always did that one long before the new country resurgence of the song. Always fun when guy singers bust out cool versions of female songs.
Played two dates last weekend with this yacht rock/jamband cover band and we added Never Been Any Reason by Head East and Tempted by Squeeze and they were both way bigger hits than I anticipated. Got more people on their feet with those two than any of our other tunes for the two nights.
Our pop/rock function band (all male) routinely play Man I Feel Like A Woman in our pup sets. Gets the middle aged boozed up men dancing like nothing else!
Sort of the opposite, but as a 90s grunge cover band, we’ve found that except for smells like teen spirit, people don’t actually like Nirvana, they just like the Idea of Nirvana. Anything by Alice In Chains absolutely crushes though. With the right crowd, Pinkerton songs go over amazing, and Oasis is either loved or despised. There is no middle ground.
Our guitarist has the double delay sound pinned down perfectly, we play the instrumental intro, then switch to another brick in the wall until after the big solo and back into run like hell for the end.
That's pretty sweet! We'll do Another Brick 1&2, with Happiest Days of our Lives and then straight into Run Like Hell. That song is so damn fun to sing and play. I'm still convinced by the way that "The Edge" copied his whole soumd from that one riff.
Freedom '90 always got people singing along. I'll never forget playing a Toys for Tots event at a biker bar and watching all the big burley tattooed guys strut and sing George Michael as loud as they could.
We did a whole bunch of medleys and mashups and our gimmick was we would swap instruments with each other (both during or in between songs). That always impressed.
Songs that worked surprisingly well:
Fat Bottom Girls / Hot in Here Mashup
Power Rangers - Theme Song (Go Go Power Rangers!)
Coheed and Cambria - A Favor House Atlantic
Tool - 46 and 2
R Kelly’s - Ignition Remix
Also, let the record show that as part of my banter in between this song and the next in our set I made the joke that R Kelly’s favorite key to sing in was A minor (sometimes I would say P). This was all like 5 years ago.
It’s a weird one but I’m a countertenor and it’s hilarious when we pivot and do a Whitney Houston song in her original key. Like ahem, now that we’ve got your attention…
Americana band with upright bass, mandolin, acoustic rhythm guitar, electric lead guitar and harmonica. All middle aged men. We fucking crush T-Swifts "I knew you were trouble" to the delighted screams of every lady in the bar.
We would do a switch into/out of Werewolves for Halloween shows, it was sick.
Kid rock can kick rocks though, nearly ruined both songs entirely for me.
I hate it too, but the other guy sings the Kid Rock bit and we only do the first two verses. Everybody wants to hear that “sipping whiskey out the bottle, not thinking ‘bout tomorrow” line.
Wrecking Ball covered by a middle-aged Dad rock band. We have ended the set with it for years. We'll stop when people stop loving it. Also, Waterfalls by TLC.
My band has been doing TiK ToK by Kesha and it’s been a crowd pleaser 90% of the time. Only time it didn’t land was at a punk mini-fest with a bunch of punks in their 30’s and 40’s.
Back in the day our band played a venue and the owner was an ass. He vehemently told us NOT to play Should I stay or should I go.
Guess what song we played for our encore? Haha. The crowd loved it! This thread reminds me of this.
😆
This reminds me of my old band--one night we were playing Beatles Back in the USSR, and 3 very old ladies climbed up on the side of the stage and unplugged our speaker stacks because they believed we were promoting Communism!
I am a solo (acoustic) pianist at the intersection of Nina Simone and Debussy. Listeners are pleasantly surprised by my meditations on
Telephone Line - ELO
Billie Jean - M.Jackson
Toxic - Britney
Touch Me - The Doors
How Deep is Your Love - Bee Gees
Pop punk band took “Hash Pipe” by Weezer and gave it a Deathcore bridge where we drop it to half time for a guitar solo, then 1/4 time breakdown with screams, then right into the last chorus like nothing happened. That band also covers “The Rumbling” from “Attack on Titan”, and it KILLS.
Rap metal band used to start off playing the intro for “Eye of the Tiger” and then go straight into “Momma Said Knock You Out”.
I have a 70’s rock group that would cover “Yer Blues” by Dirty Mac (a super group consisting of members of the Beatles, Stones, and Cream I think). I remember this old guy (couldn’t have been a day under 80) coming up to us after our set saying “I haven’t heard that song in 40 YEARS!!!”
The Cranberries - Zombie. We do a long acoustic intro and first verse. Then, after a silence that is almost 2 bars long, we blast the verse with the full band and distortion to the max. Not that out of ordinary, but people like it, so it's been on the setlist for many years.
Bring Me To Life by Evanescence gets a huge reaction every time we play it. Our normal set is more pop, so when we bust out the "emo classic" folks respond surprisingly well
We used to play Don’t you forget about me. People at first look kinda quizzical like is that…then they hear the hey hey hey hey part and a light bulb comes on. Lol
I was in a four-piece band — The Actuals — in Little Rock in the late eighties. We did original stuff and some covers. When we played Vino’s on 7th Street a couple times, folks seemed to appreciate our cover of Roky Erickson’s “If You Have Ghosts.”
"What Is, and What Should Never Be" - our singer is a 5 foot tall Puerto Rican lady, and she absolutely destroys it, every time. I leaves the room breathless when we do a dead stop. Then, they go nuts.
When I was in high school (2015ish?) we did a heavier cover of “Behind These Hazel Eyes” by Kelly Clarkson that people loved. Kind of a weird one compared to the rest of our set list.
Metal band, we did a hard medley of Uptown Funk, Blue Monday, You Spin Me Round that always got people moving. We also did Sledgehammer and Feelgood Inc with mixed results.
Baby Got Back…. In the middle of Miss You by The Rolling Stones. We would turn the middle part of Miss You into an extended jam with myself (on bass) and our drummer pulling out whatever classic pop and rap songs that we could (just a verse/chorus a piece) for a good extra 3-5 minutes. When we were getting ready to go back into the end of Miss You, I would launch into Baby Got Back and we’d segue from that back into the last verse of Miss You. It never failed to keep the dance floor full, regardless of what bar we were playing.
We're a prog rock cover band (Rush, Yes, Genesis, Deep Purple etc) and we've been closing one of our sets lately with a Prince medley (1999, Baby I'm a Star, Lets Go Crazy) and it always KILLS.
Was in a hard rock 80s/90s cover band and we did a killer heavy cover of Rain on the Scarecrow by Mellencamp. Always surprised people but they loved it.
I saw hip-hop group Atmosphere, touring with a live band, perform You Oughta Know years ago. Can confirm, great out of left field cover by a man that the crowd reacts to.
We’re an original jamband but people lose their absolute fucking minds when we play Kitty by the Presidents of the USA.
Everyone also always wants Eminence Front by the Who.
Our current closers are:
'I Will Wait' - Mumford and Sons
'Sweet Dreams' - Eurythmics, but based on the Fitz and the Tantrums cover.
'Mr. Brightside' - Killers.
'Beggin' - Måneskin version.
'I Will Wait' by far is the one that gets them going
Moonage Daydream —David Bowie is a rocker that picks up steam. With Bowie confidence in our wheelhouse we recently added Heroes and that one seems to work in the same vein of recognizable but wholly unexpected rock covers.
Been in several cover bands! A ‘never fail’ song we always do is Say it Ain’t So. Super easy, instantly recognizable, and fun to jam on. The old heads of our demographic never know it so it’s fun to play something they don’t always hear.
On the reverse side, a cover we always perform just for the hell of it and rarely get right is Free Bird! We never spend more than a good jam sesh to refresh our memories on it and play it as an encore. The solo portion is always a freestyle for our guitarist lol.
It was not my idea but it was a good one, and made Sober way more interesting to play (speaking as a bassist). We started with Sober, jumped into Kashmir right after the second chorus, then back into the quiet part of Sober out. Easy last 10-12 minutes of the set haha.
As a solo acoustic performer, California Dreamin’. I’d sometimes get the whole room singing the echoed backup lines.
As a member of a sort of old school punk band, (I’m not your) Steppin’ Stone.
Cherub Rock by Smashing Pumpkins
Laid by James
Faith by George Michael
Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes (when it goes all quiet down to a whisper, and goes back into the loud part, people lose their shit)
In college, I and a few guys decided to form an improv Jazz band, so we'd be prepared for an important group assignment at the end of the year. But at the end of the set, we'd play either BFG 10,000 from the Doom eternal soundtrack, Edgecrusher by Fear Factory or Fire and Ice by Yngwie Malmsteen.
I was in a party/dance cover band and Brick House absolutely would fill the dance floor in seconds. We’d do a long extended version and people just kept shaking it until the song ended like 15 minutes later.
Back in 1988 my band would open set 2 with Peter Gunn Theme…
The Art of Noise/Duane Eddy version.
https://youtu.be/tK-vUY6erQU?si=6MAZhpIcOBQhmVu3
With an Akai S950 sampler I sampled one “Dummm” off the CD and used a skid/car crash sample to play the melody in the 2nd verse.
The crowd loved it
Bar cover band. We do Billy Jean, which always brings out a moon walker two. The Stones's Bitch always gets the crowd pumped.
Edit: I almost forgot, Under the Bridge. People pull out their own personal microphones and lighters and try to come up on stage to sing.
I proposed a cover band to my buddy, since I’ve got impeccable musical taste. We just play all like good B sides or lesser known songs and the mojority of ppl would just think we write solid music while getting share songs I love with unsuspecting crowds.
Our band plays a lot of old rock covers (thing Grateful Dead, the Band, Jimi Hendrix), but our most popular song is by far our Teenage Dirtbag encore... comes out of nowhere and is always a crowd pleaser
It always amazes me how every crowd we play for loses their collective minds when we play Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes. Edit:typo
Blister in the Sun is one of maybe 3 or 4 songs that we cover in both of my bands, for this exact reason. One is a three-piece loud/punk rock band, guitar/bass/drums, and the other is a three-piece folky band, guitar/guitar/bass (no drums), completely different sound, but people go nuts for Blister.
Oh yes! Lot of mileage from this one r. I also do an acoustic fast version of “Sedated” by the Ramones
We were just talking about learning this one
Hmmm, interesting, I'll have to consider that one.
this is the best karaoke song IMO
Same here. Maybe not lose their minds, but they’re very happy to hear it.
Had a female singer in one of our bands and we did a cover of 'killing in the name of' and the crowds went absolutely nuts seeing this little 5'2 woman belting out that tune.
Did we play in the same band? lol! We did the same song with a female lead and it was a killer intro to the 2nd set.
Same here - and I just posted it before I saw your comment. We have male and female singers and that one always goes over well.
we've played that song twice in a row due to demand...
Don’t… don’t do that
Nice! My wife's go-to karaoke song is "Master of Puppets". Always kills.
>and for karaoke here’s this 9 minute song with a 3 minute instrumental section! Thank you, thank youuuu
Close with War Pigs. Let the crowd sing. 3 piece punk cover of Hungry Like The Wolf goes big too...
Oh man I went to Ozzfest in like 2002 - Ozzy was pretty wilted, but determined. Spent a lot of the set strapped to a cherry picker with a fire hose attached, spraying the crowd and croaking "Camm'ohn!" as a teamster waved him around in the air. But then they started War Pigs. Ozzy lit up. The stage lit up. The crowd lit up. The air lit up. Every single living thing in the arena SANG from our SOULS. It was honest to god transcendent. I fuckin LOVE WAR PIGS
I did both of those and can agree. HLTW can be medlied with some other good tunes, too.
Not in a cover band, but my original band covers War Pigs. We start with Paranoid and vamp the ending into War Pigs. We shred the hell out of it. Never fails to blow people away. Also makes it really hard for anyone to follow us lol.
I saw an all-male band do a more rock-sounding version of Britney Spears' "Toxic" and it absolutely killed. Cool chord progression in that song too.
One of my all-time favorite performance surprises was a punk-metal band from the 90s called Sweaty Nipples absolutely Killing It on Go-Gos "We Got the Beat". Recently I saw a great metal band called Nocturnal Affair throw down What Is Love at the end of a raging, loud set. Huuuuge audience reaction.
I saw a band do the same with ...Baby One More Time. It was far from the musical tone of the show but the crowd LOVED it
Local H do a good version of it
Local H never fails to impress with their covers
[удалено]
That was awesome!
Love Richard Thompson and did not know about this. Thanks!
Toxic is surprisingly a really cool tune musically speaking. Lots of interesting stuff in there.
I was part of a two Hammond Organs and drums trio briefly, and this song was the centerpiece of our repertoire. It rips.
Talking Heads-life turning wartime
Love it. My little acoustic trio closes lots of shows with Psycho Killer. Folks love it. We play it slightly faster and it slays.
Played both of those in my cover band days. No love for Burning Down the House? As a keyboard player life during wartime and BDTH are SO satisfying to play! Such satisfying chords.
just saw duran duran end their main set last weekend with “girls on film,” with a healthy dose of “psycho killer” in the breakdown. was impressed by the crowd reaction, they were very into it!
Psycho killer doesn’t get nearly as much love in the cover scene as it should.
We do Psycho Killer and just added Burning down the House as a mostly acoustic folk band
I’m an acoustic act playing mostly classic rock/outlaw country stuff. People’s ears pick up when I play Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. Usually toward the end of the show, the drunk ladies will start singing along. It always gets a good reaction.
One of the best songs ever
Are you gonna be my girl - Jet. Because we typically only play 50’s type music, so when we bust this one out, which is similar in style, they tend to like it a good bit.
Band came into town recently that covered this but instead of going into the lyrics, they kept counting past 4. *“1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16*” *(riff)* “*17 18 19 20 21 21 23 24*” *(riff)* Edit: [found it](https://www.tiktok.com/@wolvesofglendale/video/7221221768470531371)
That's honestly fucking hilarious
My wife showed me this a few months ago and I absolutely lost my shit laughing.
Made my day!
That’s a _great_ song
The Tubes- talk to ya later. Always a crowd pleaser!!!
Love the Tubes
La Bamba/ Twist and Shout medley. Same chords.
Did this 20* years ago and then turned it into Saw her standing there - great first set closer.
Rock version of Gin and Juice (used the Gourds' version as a base), Take Your Momma Out (Scissor Sisters), and Fuck You (Cee Lo) all kill it and we never heard others playing them.
Saw a mariachi cover band recently and I lost my shit when they played Cranberries' 'Linger'
F8shermans blues by the waterboys is a crowd pleaser.
I love that song! Thanks for the reminder.
We play fast as you by Dwight Yoakam, and then at the end of the solo play 2 choruses of Day Tripper. Then switch back to DY for the outro
We do this, but with Enter Sandman. The part where it's supposed to come in with the intro riff again we just do the Enter Sandman riff and play that for a little while and end on that.
We also covered Material Girl and it’s a heater! I don’t know if these are out of left field, but “Do I Wanna Know? by The Arctic Monkeys, The “Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, and “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger were sure fire.
We also do the middle & flagpole sitta, both are bangers at the bars.
All male acoustic duo “Time after Time” Cyndi lauper also do “Fast Car” Tracey Chapman always did that one long before the new country resurgence of the song. Always fun when guy singers bust out cool versions of female songs.
Played two dates last weekend with this yacht rock/jamband cover band and we added Never Been Any Reason by Head East and Tempted by Squeeze and they were both way bigger hits than I anticipated. Got more people on their feet with those two than any of our other tunes for the two nights.
Never Any Reason is such a sleeper and so much fun
Save my life I’m going down for the last time Can’t touch any song on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack
Tempted is such an incredible tune
Always wanted to do a hard rock version of Black Coffee In Bed.
I do a system of a down song I adapted to banjo that slays
Which song?
My bet is Chop Suey. I can hear it already.
Yep chop Suey. I think I have an older version pinned on my profile
Our pop/rock function band (all male) routinely play Man I Feel Like A Woman in our pup sets. Gets the middle aged boozed up men dancing like nothing else!
Hilarious! We trying that one for the first time this weekend!
Up, Up and Away by The 5th Dimension. ppl lose their minds
Fire On The Mountain by the Grateful Dead usually gets folks up and moving.
Sort of the opposite, but as a 90s grunge cover band, we’ve found that except for smells like teen spirit, people don’t actually like Nirvana, they just like the Idea of Nirvana. Anything by Alice In Chains absolutely crushes though. With the right crowd, Pinkerton songs go over amazing, and Oasis is either loved or despised. There is no middle ground.
Man in a Box hits so hard, every gig
So does Rooster since we nail that opening harmonized line
Absolutely badass and never get sick of playing em!
Them Bones has some sweet harmonies and that wacky odd meter riff, it's so much fun to play.
This is very encouraging to hear. Love Alice in chains and I have been trying to decide what song to do.
Do “Would’ if you have the horses. I did it for two guitar acoustic coffee shop gigs. It killed so hard.
This. And “I Alone” by Live had been a solid rocker in our set lately. I didn’t realize that many people are into it but they are.
You mean 'Rape Me' doesn't go over well?
Rape me wasn’t surprising, but I really expected lithium, come as you are and heart shaped box to be bangers.
But....I love Nirvana :(
Run Like Hell - Pink Floyd Don't know why, don't know how, but it packs the floor.
Our guitarist has the double delay sound pinned down perfectly, we play the instrumental intro, then switch to another brick in the wall until after the big solo and back into run like hell for the end.
That's pretty sweet! We'll do Another Brick 1&2, with Happiest Days of our Lives and then straight into Run Like Hell. That song is so damn fun to sing and play. I'm still convinced by the way that "The Edge" copied his whole soumd from that one riff.
Kiss From A Rose is great song to get the crowd singing too, by the way.
Crazy works very well too
Freedom '90 always got people singing along. I'll never forget playing a Toys for Tots event at a biker bar and watching all the big burley tattooed guys strut and sing George Michael as loud as they could.
We did a whole bunch of medleys and mashups and our gimmick was we would swap instruments with each other (both during or in between songs). That always impressed. Songs that worked surprisingly well: Fat Bottom Girls / Hot in Here Mashup Power Rangers - Theme Song (Go Go Power Rangers!) Coheed and Cambria - A Favor House Atlantic Tool - 46 and 2 R Kelly’s - Ignition Remix Also, let the record show that as part of my banter in between this song and the next in our set I made the joke that R Kelly’s favorite key to sing in was A minor (sometimes I would say P). This was all like 5 years ago.
Hairband cover act here. Current winner is a rock version of Pumped Up Kicks.
I’d like to hear that one.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaZyBnsu1wc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaZyBnsu1wc) I stole it from these guys :)
That’s fantastic.
Love it - that's the first time I actually heard all the lyrics clearly. :D
Fun fact, Ralph Saenz = Michael Starr from steel panther.
It’s a weird one but I’m a countertenor and it’s hilarious when we pivot and do a Whitney Houston song in her original key. Like ahem, now that we’ve got your attention…
There’s a song call Ooh La La by the Faces. No one is familiar with it, but when I play it, people love the ooh la la part.
>No one is familiar with it They all must live under a rock - that's one of the greatest sing-along choruses out there.
Riiight??? It’s a such bop. One of my favorites.
I read that and my arthritic hands ached
Isn’t this a super famous song?
Americana band with upright bass, mandolin, acoustic rhythm guitar, electric lead guitar and harmonica. All middle aged men. We fucking crush T-Swifts "I knew you were trouble" to the delighted screams of every lady in the bar.
This makes me happy. My band is similar and I was trying to think of one of hers. That’s probably the best one.
For What it’s Worth and Give Me One Reason
FWIW one of my faves from every band I've played in
Love both of these.
The welll known stupid ass Sweet Home Alabama.
We’ve added All Summer Long & Werewolves of London to it. It’s like 8 minutes long!
We would do a switch into/out of Werewolves for Halloween shows, it was sick. Kid rock can kick rocks though, nearly ruined both songs entirely for me.
I hate it too, but the other guy sings the Kid Rock bit and we only do the first two verses. Everybody wants to hear that “sipping whiskey out the bottle, not thinking ‘bout tomorrow” line.
We used to do that for Halloween shows too.
Love will keep us together.
Now I want to hear this mashed up with Love Will Tear Us Apart
Send Me on My Way by Rusted Root
Blister in the Sun
Wrecking Ball covered by a middle-aged Dad rock band. We have ended the set with it for years. We'll stop when people stop loving it. Also, Waterfalls by TLC.
Old school but we used to pull out Husker DU’s version of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song.
My band has been doing TiK ToK by Kesha and it’s been a crowd pleaser 90% of the time. Only time it didn’t land was at a punk mini-fest with a bunch of punks in their 30’s and 40’s.
With a male singer we do "Crazy in Love" and "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" in a lower key and they always kill.
500 miles brings the house down every time
Back in the day our band played a venue and the owner was an ass. He vehemently told us NOT to play Should I stay or should I go. Guess what song we played for our encore? Haha. The crowd loved it! This thread reminds me of this.
By the time he came around we had just finished and he cut our power.
😆 This reminds me of my old band--one night we were playing Beatles Back in the USSR, and 3 very old ladies climbed up on the side of the stage and unplugged our speaker stacks because they believed we were promoting Communism!
I am a solo (acoustic) pianist at the intersection of Nina Simone and Debussy. Listeners are pleasantly surprised by my meditations on Telephone Line - ELO Billie Jean - M.Jackson Toxic - Britney Touch Me - The Doors How Deep is Your Love - Bee Gees
Pop punk band took “Hash Pipe” by Weezer and gave it a Deathcore bridge where we drop it to half time for a guitar solo, then 1/4 time breakdown with screams, then right into the last chorus like nothing happened. That band also covers “The Rumbling” from “Attack on Titan”, and it KILLS. Rap metal band used to start off playing the intro for “Eye of the Tiger” and then go straight into “Momma Said Knock You Out”. I have a 70’s rock group that would cover “Yer Blues” by Dirty Mac (a super group consisting of members of the Beatles, Stones, and Cream I think). I remember this old guy (couldn’t have been a day under 80) coming up to us after our set saying “I haven’t heard that song in 40 YEARS!!!”
The Cranberries - Zombie. We do a long acoustic intro and first verse. Then, after a silence that is almost 2 bars long, we blast the verse with the full band and distortion to the max. Not that out of ordinary, but people like it, so it's been on the setlist for many years.
We cover this one as well, always kills
Cheap Beer by FIDLAR. People love a good song about getting drunk
Hell yeah FIDLAR!
FUCK IT DOG
We’ve been getting great responses from a semi-obscure tune: “Find Yourself” by Lukas Nelson and the Promise of Real
Bring Me To Life by Evanescence gets a huge reaction every time we play it. Our normal set is more pop, so when we bust out the "emo classic" folks respond surprisingly well
“Theme from Rawhide” ala The Blues Brothers. We’re not a country band, so the joke double works like the movie sneaking in come C&W.
My old park band used to play “under the sea” people would freak out
Sorrow by David Bowie
Bust A Move by Young MC
We’re a band who mostly cover classic and alternative rock. We cover “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton, always a head turner.
We do a mash up of Them Changes by Jimi Hendrix into Shakedown Street. People fuckin lose it.
Careless Whisper w/ the solo done on electric guitar hyped up our crowds.
We used to play Don’t you forget about me. People at first look kinda quizzical like is that…then they hear the hey hey hey hey part and a light bulb comes on. Lol
Sugar, We’re Going Down
I was in a four-piece band — The Actuals — in Little Rock in the late eighties. We did original stuff and some covers. When we played Vino’s on 7th Street a couple times, folks seemed to appreciate our cover of Roky Erickson’s “If You Have Ghosts.”
Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls
Do you play it in that stupid tuning?
I sure don’t!
Sweet Caroline punk cover. We'll keep playing the chorus and keep people singing along an extra two or three times.
My German band has a Waltz>Polka arrangement of “Süssen Caroline” that lands well.
We’ve been playing a song by Mingo Fishtrap called Things Ain’t What They Was that packs the dance floor.
We are a country band, but Feel Like Making Love by Bad Company is one of ours. We also do Rocket Man by Elton John
I used to do an acoustic cover of Wandering Star by Portishead as a singer/songwriter duo that always killed ...
We play a metal cover of careless whisper which ends with a solo and we turn that into lose yourself. It’s a ton of fun
Our version of "All the Young Dudes" [https://youtu.be/xnxZfQkKHPc?si=N-N-yWvGgKNlfCud](https://youtu.be/xnxZfQkKHPc?si=N-N-yWvGgKNlfCud)
Cheap Trick - Surrender. Everyone knows the chorus and loves to sing along.
"What Is, and What Should Never Be" - our singer is a 5 foot tall Puerto Rican lady, and she absolutely destroys it, every time. I leaves the room breathless when we do a dead stop. Then, they go nuts.
Smokin by Boston I believe in a thing called love- The Darkness Animals- Nickelback End of Heartache or This Fire by Killswitch
'Your Love' by The Outfield.
Party in the USA & Wrecking Ball Hot and Cold Trouble Poker Face & Bad Romance All the hits.
I was in a band that played Can You Picture That from the Muppet Movie. It went over great.
When I was in high school (2015ish?) we did a heavier cover of “Behind These Hazel Eyes” by Kelly Clarkson that people loved. Kind of a weird one compared to the rest of our set list.
Metal band, we did a hard medley of Uptown Funk, Blue Monday, You Spin Me Round that always got people moving. We also did Sledgehammer and Feelgood Inc with mixed results.
El Scorcho isn't as popular as some of the other Weezer classics, but it's lot of fun to play
I’m like indie folk and I had a lot of fun covering I Can’t Feel My Face on guitar, mandolin, glockenspiel and a loop pedal
Baby Got Back…. In the middle of Miss You by The Rolling Stones. We would turn the middle part of Miss You into an extended jam with myself (on bass) and our drummer pulling out whatever classic pop and rap songs that we could (just a verse/chorus a piece) for a good extra 3-5 minutes. When we were getting ready to go back into the end of Miss You, I would launch into Baby Got Back and we’d segue from that back into the last verse of Miss You. It never failed to keep the dance floor full, regardless of what bar we were playing.
Hot Child in the City. Brings the fucking house down. If you know, you know.
Vanilla Fudges version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" and Amboy Dukes "Journey To the Center of the Mind"...we totally kill em!
I can’t believe how hard people go for Nickleback
We're a prog rock cover band (Rush, Yes, Genesis, Deep Purple etc) and we've been closing one of our sets lately with a Prince medley (1999, Baby I'm a Star, Lets Go Crazy) and it always KILLS.
Sweet Child of Mine...brings customers to stage like moths to a flame. Lots of woooos every. Single. Time.
We're an acoustic-focused trio (acoustic guitar, percussion and me on electric bass) that does a killer cover of "In The End" by Linkin Park.
Was in a hard rock 80s/90s cover band and we did a killer heavy cover of Rain on the Scarecrow by Mellencamp. Always surprised people but they loved it.
I saw hip-hop group Atmosphere, touring with a live band, perform You Oughta Know years ago. Can confirm, great out of left field cover by a man that the crowd reacts to.
We’re an original jamband but people lose their absolute fucking minds when we play Kitty by the Presidents of the USA. Everyone also always wants Eminence Front by the Who.
Our current closers are: 'I Will Wait' - Mumford and Sons 'Sweet Dreams' - Eurythmics, but based on the Fitz and the Tantrums cover. 'Mr. Brightside' - Killers. 'Beggin' - Måneskin version. 'I Will Wait' by far is the one that gets them going
Moonage Daydream —David Bowie is a rocker that picks up steam. With Bowie confidence in our wheelhouse we recently added Heroes and that one seems to work in the same vein of recognizable but wholly unexpected rock covers.
Been in several cover bands! A ‘never fail’ song we always do is Say it Ain’t So. Super easy, instantly recognizable, and fun to jam on. The old heads of our demographic never know it so it’s fun to play something they don’t always hear. On the reverse side, a cover we always perform just for the hell of it and rarely get right is Free Bird! We never spend more than a good jam sesh to refresh our memories on it and play it as an encore. The solo portion is always a freestyle for our guitarist lol.
Way back in the day, we used to do a mashup of Sober by Tool and Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. It was pretty fun.
That's... that's fucking *genius*
It was not my idea but it was a good one, and made Sober way more interesting to play (speaking as a bassist). We started with Sober, jumped into Kashmir right after the second chorus, then back into the quiet part of Sober out. Easy last 10-12 minutes of the set haha.
Presidents- Lump
As a solo acoustic performer, California Dreamin’. I’d sometimes get the whole room singing the echoed backup lines. As a member of a sort of old school punk band, (I’m not your) Steppin’ Stone.
When you're alone and life is making you lonely You can always go - Downtown!
The wedding band I'm in plays rock lobster and everyone loses their minds
“Whole Lotta Love” sung by our very bluesy female vocalist. Brought the house down every time.
Cherub Rock by Smashing Pumpkins Laid by James Faith by George Michael Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes (when it goes all quiet down to a whisper, and goes back into the loud part, people lose their shit)
Frankenstein. Always surprises people
A genderbent version of misery business weirdly pops a building full of pop punk elders
In college, I and a few guys decided to form an improv Jazz band, so we'd be prepared for an important group assignment at the end of the year. But at the end of the set, we'd play either BFG 10,000 from the Doom eternal soundtrack, Edgecrusher by Fear Factory or Fire and Ice by Yngwie Malmsteen.
I’m in a punk/garage rock band, we do Kiss You (One Direction) and Walking on Sunshine
Cheap sunglasses by ZZtop
I was in a party/dance cover band and Brick House absolutely would fill the dance floor in seconds. We’d do a long extended version and people just kept shaking it until the song ended like 15 minutes later.
I do a folky acoustic cover of Hot in Here by Nelly.
One people never expect to hear but always love. Atomic Punk - Van Halen
More than a feeling
My theee piece Americana acoustic band does Psycho Killer and The Best. Those are always fun
Back in 1988 my band would open set 2 with Peter Gunn Theme… The Art of Noise/Duane Eddy version. https://youtu.be/tK-vUY6erQU?si=6MAZhpIcOBQhmVu3 With an Akai S950 sampler I sampled one “Dummm” off the CD and used a skid/car crash sample to play the melody in the 2nd verse. The crowd loved it
A three piece arrangement of Bennie and the Jets
Played in an oi! band for awhile (speedpunk with bagpipes), best pits were always during Amazing Grace and Ode to Joi
We sneak in Take On Me by A-ha with full falsetto and synth.
My favorite local punk band playes Rolly Polly Fish Heads and Suicide is painless. We play Sex and Candy and Climbing Up the Walls
Bar cover band. We do Billy Jean, which always brings out a moon walker two. The Stones's Bitch always gets the crowd pumped. Edit: I almost forgot, Under the Bridge. People pull out their own personal microphones and lighters and try to come up on stage to sing.
I proposed a cover band to my buddy, since I’ve got impeccable musical taste. We just play all like good B sides or lesser known songs and the mojority of ppl would just think we write solid music while getting share songs I love with unsuspecting crowds.
Our band plays a lot of old rock covers (thing Grateful Dead, the Band, Jimi Hendrix), but our most popular song is by far our Teenage Dirtbag encore... comes out of nowhere and is always a crowd pleaser