Ideas Required - Rock Covers of Female Fronted Pop

[2elliot]

Skunk Anansie
Alanis Morrisette

[Happy Jack]

And you can always go dark and mysterious:[list]
[*]Stupid Girl - Garbage
[*]Betty Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes
[*]The Look Of Love - Dusty Springfield (fabulous baseline BTW)
[/list]
Edit: Bloody spell checker strikes again. That song does have a fabulous baseline, but I actually meant bassline.

You want bright & bouncy?[list]
[*]They Don't Know - Tracey Ullman
[*]Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - Cyndi Pauper (aaaaargh! I swear that bloody spell checker is going to have to go. See if you can guess what I actually typed.)
[*]There's A Guy Works Down The Chipshop - Kirsty MacColl
[*]Walking On Sunshine - Katrina & The Waves
[*]99 Red Balloons - Nena
[/list]
Before anyone sneers at some of those, just try playing them. Barrel loads of fun for a bass player and every one a crowd pleaser.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Happy Jack

[redbandit599]

Going through a similar list myself - have a female fronted band and I think we need to go 'more female' in song choice. A few I like that haven't seen mentioned

En Vogue - Free Your Mind
Abba stuff - we do Mamma Mia based on a cover on Youtube by a guy called Scott Gaskin, that goes down [u]really[/u] well
Celebrity Skin - Hole
Barracuda - Heart (love playing this one - check out the Alice in Chains with Gretchen Wilson version for added heavy)

[Guest bassman7755]

[quote name='redbandit599' timestamp='1478509206' post='3169440']
Abba stuff - we do Mamma Mia based on a cover on Youtube by a guy called Scott Gaskin, that goes down [u]really[/u] well
[/quote]

Yeah its worth perusing youtube for metal covers of pop songs, you can find metal versions of pretty much anything: maddona, adele, britney etc and yes theres some great metal versions of abba songs https://www.facebook.com/SwedishHitzGoesMetal/

[DaveFry]

Maybe a The Who's Magic Bus type rework of ;



[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILaTgQBKRbE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILaTgQBKRbE[/url]

( Soho's Hippychick )

Edited November 7, 2016 by DaveFry

[bertbass]

Jefferson's Airplane / Starship?

[bassbora]

How many guitars?

We do some of the tracks mentioned, but Pink and Blondie as well.

The girl we have is a bit of a power house so we can have a range of stuff. Led Zepplin (Whole lot of love) always goes down a storm and any Bon Jovi.

[Bolo]

No Doubt/ Gwen Stefani
Guano Apes
Christina Aguilera (fighter?)
Within Temptation (not sure how well known they are down your way)
Imelda May
Whale (Hobo humping slobo babe?)

Plenty of material to create your own version of, could be fun!

[gapiro]

I notice in a couple of posts you said your guitar player wouldn't play - is he unkeen on the same stuff as you or not capable enough to do the songs suggested?

+1 to garbage - Why do you love me would be my choice

[bassfunk]

Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody. It's got a great synth bass line that would translate to a Metal Guitar riff

[HowieBass]

Any of the hits from Siouxsie and the Banshees? Happy House? Nice instrumental intro...

http://youtu.be/amR6-neQBPE

[HowieBass]

I really rate PJ Harvey's early stuff too, 'Dress' is a great song and in this video she's wearing probably one of the shortest known to woman...

http://youtu.be/QySwGXrpHzw

[HengistPod]

We currently have a girly singer and do stuff like Echo Beach, couple of Blondie tunes (Call Me always seems to work, and is a piece of piss), the two Tourists songs everyone knows which are already rocky (Only Want To Be With You, So Good To Be Back Home), and are considering something from the Eurythmics.

Journey is always an option too, depending on her range. Any Way You Want It is fun, and Don't Stop Believing can be played atrociously and still go down a storm at beer o'clock.

Girlschool are worth a look ... Emergency, or any of the singles off the Hit & Run LP, which also has a good version of Tush on it.

[amnesia]

[quote name='gapiro' timestamp='1478524222' post='3169588']
I notice in a couple of posts you said your guitar player wouldn't play - is he unkeen on the same stuff as you or not capable enough to do the songs suggested?

+1 to garbage - Why do you love me would be my choice
[/quote]

He is plenty capable...no problem there.



I am not looking to cover female fronted rock bands - there are bands local to us that have that squared away. I love Pink and I think there is some mileage there - its just convincing the whole band that the tracks are worth it.

Its fine doing a completely fantabulous rendition of a Van Halen album track (for example) - but if nobody knows it, whats the point?

[KevB]

Patti Smith? OK it's got piano in it but could probably be arranged for a guitar picking style intro? good guitar solo in there too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0peTfMOdDoo

[synthaside]

Stuff that' we've done that sounded really ace , stealthy crowd pleasers ... From our female vocalist ... and these can really be rocked / punked up to taste

Thorn in my side Eurythmics , complete with Sax part's played with a wah

Jungle Book I wanna be like you , Punked up

Bryan Adams and Mel C , this one is actually a reasonable tune .... and Everyone sings it back at you.

[operative451]

I've heard good versions of Kylie's 'Can't get you out of my head'' done by rock bands. Also if you like a bit of Gaga, 'Telephone' works really well, there's a good opportunity for some 'diddle-um diddle-um' riffing in the 'you can call all you want' bit. There's a bunch of metal covers of 'Let it go' on youtube too...

Also i was just noodling with a dirty bass sound over abba's waterloo, played at half speed on youtube. Actually it sounds really sinister - maybe

"I tried to hold you back but you were stronger / and now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight"

had different connotations in the 70s!

Edited November 7, 2016 by operative451

[Chrismanbass]

[url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXjqTqj4_qY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXjqTqj4_qY[/url]



I've heard this done by a female singer before and its pretty awesome

[blue]

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1478460723' post='3169188']
Kelly Clarkson-Since you been gone is a great tune and she can belt them out.
Anything by Paramore should be top of your list, brick by boring brick, misery business to get you started (addicted ).
[/quote]

What an underated bunch of young top notch Pros, Paramore. I'm a big fan.

You might want to check out Gail Hale of Hale Storm, she's the "real deal" and the "cats meow".

Blue

Edited November 7, 2016 by blue

[mr zed]

Have a listen to Within Temptation's version of Radioactive (Imagine Dragons cover) and their version of Titanium. Faster is also a cracker & one of their own.

[TheGreek]

Banarama!!!

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1478557241' post='3169949']
Banarama!!!
[/quote]

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you spell it ...

[ead]

Something like the Muse version of Feeling Good might work.

[paul_c2]

Some good suggestions already, but definitely worth doing a couple of Garbage songs. Also, Blondie, although it would need an amount of adaption due to no keyboard.

I know you said the singer was good but I doubt good enough to so "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush - its a very hard song to cover and sound right, due to the distinctive vocal. There's a couple of other Kate Bush ones which are more approachable, for example "James and the Cold Gun", "Violin" etc which are also a bit more upbeat.

[Phil Starr]

I'm jealous, I've been in a couple of female fronted rock bands but the old lags on guitar were too stuck in their ways to learn a new song. and refused to listen to anything with a girl singer post 1975.

There was a fabulous version of I kissed a Girl from Jools Holland 2008 where the session guys really rocked it up but Youtube have deleted it. It brought the house down for us.

This was a great one for us, guitard excepted, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txBfhpm1jI0

this would probably work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHBxJCq99jA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INKwtDSC2gY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOgSdc8OAI

What's up never failed us, Mercy is the female fronted Mustang Sally if you need a banker. There's a few Eurythmics. Black Velvet, Piece of My Heart. Loads of Fleetwood Mac. Weak As I Am (Skunk Anansie) worked well. Anything AC/DC does work well with a female vocalist. There's a mashup of Rolling in the Deep you could do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dkN_84EGj0

There's actually too much to choose from, we've no idea of your singers range or how closely you want to do 80's/90's stuff.