The Only Modern Beatles Covers Worth Listening To
The Beatles have inspired so many covers that it’s mindboggling. Most modern attempts to add something to the Fab Four’s sound aren’t impressive. Only one album of Beatles covers from this century is worth your time. On top of that, the album is worth listening to again and again.
1 album of Beatles covers is weird in the best possible way
What do Linkin Park, Aretha Franklin, Katy Perry, and Petula Clark have in common? They’ve all released covers of The Beatles. That’s not surprising because so many artists want to pay tribute to the biggest rock band ever. During the 20th century, some Beatles covers were widely beloved, such as Elton John’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and Fiona Apple’s “Across the Universe.” After the year 2000, few Fab Four covers garnered much attention or gained critical acclaim.
The best set of Beatles covers in recent years in The Flaming Lips’ album With a Little Help from My Fwends. This cheeky neo-psychedelia album has numerous guest stars, including Miley Cyrus, Moby, and Tegan and Sara. Beyond that, it is a real sonic trip. The production is beyond bizarre, which makes it an entertaining listen for anyone with a taste for the avant-garde.
How a band turned a covers album into a work of art
With a Little Help from My Fwends twists some of the soundscapes of Sgt. Pepper beyond recognition. Some Fab Four fanatics might take issue with The Flaming Lips’ irreverent approach to the material. However, it lives up to the spirit of the original. The Beatles were not slavishly recreating the past when they made their psychedelic concept album.
Beyond that, Sgt. Pepper doesn’t seem as strange as it did in 1967. With a Little Help from My Fwends boldly defamiliarizes us with its source and manages to make it sound as cutting-edge as the original album once did. It’s a trip through time and space and discerningly poor taste and fuzzy DIY audio mixing that you won’t want to miss.
What The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne thought of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’
During a 2014 interview with Pacific Standard, The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne discussed his relationship with the Fab Four. “My siblings looked and talked the way [The Beatles] did, they took drugs, and the first thing I remember listening to is ‘Strawberry Fields Forever,'” he said. “But Sgt. Pepper, to me, is an even more direct subconscious trigger.
“The first few months when I was first listening to it, there was one side of the speaker system that didn’t work, and on most of our music my siblings couldn’t tell because so many records were mono,” he added. “And on a song like ‘A Day in the Life,’ where Lennon’s voice comes in and out of the mix, I could only hear the left speaker. It was amazing: How did he do that? That was part of the appeal for me, that mystery. Listening to it as an adult, it’s funny, it almost doesn’t measure up, because his voice isn’t drifting in and out; it’s drifting side to side. As a child, I’d heard this supreme otherwordly sound—and it was all an accident.”
Coyne managed to create a “supreme otherwordly sound” when he took his own crack at Sgt. Pepper.
