10 Greatest Metal Covers Of Pop Songs

Protecting a pop tune could be a metallic band’s truest check. Are you able to flip one thing that 99 % of your followers hate into one thing 100% of your followers love?

These bands understood that good songwriting transcends style, and that an ideal metallic cowl can exist wherever a stable basis lies. Even with among the most overplayed and corniest pop singles of all time, these metallic bands created covers proof against criticism, giving us some pop-goes-metal bangers for the ages.

No person… completely no one… did cowl songs like Children of Bodom. From the all-too-serious world of neoclassical dying metallic, Bodom have been by no means afraid to get foolish, and their cowl of Britney Spears‘ “Oops I Did It Once more” is their crowning achievement in having enjoyable for enjoyable’s sake. Epic solos, Alexi Laiho‘s vicious voice, killer preparations… it is the GOAT. 

Earlier than HIM started displaying up on each MTV present even loosely affiliated with Bam Margera, it was the band’s cowl of Chris Isaak‘s “Depraved Sport” that made them superstars in Finland. Launched in 1997, it finally grew to become probably the most carried out tune of HIM‘s 26-year profession. Ville Valo‘s voice is ideal on the monitor, and HIM‘s closely melodic guitar sections made the traditional tune burst with shade. 

A few of the best cowl songs in historical past work as a result of they’re polar opposites of the unique. Type O Negative took a sunny-day, gentle rock hippy anthem and dragged it into the abyss. The doom metallic reimagining of Seals and Crofts‘ “Summer season Breeze” is iconic for its contradictory nature, but in addition as a result of Peter Steele genuinely liked the unique and handled it with the right respect.

Metalheads adore it when a band refuses to take itself too severely. Enter Graveworm‘s cowl of Bonnie Tyler‘s “Holding Out for a Hero”… usually mislabeled as “I Want a Hero.” Neck-and-neck with Survivor‘s “Eye of the Tiger”, “Holding Out for a Hero” was one of the cliche and overplayed film soundtrack songs of the Eighties. It was so rattling catchy that it simply by no means went away. Graveworm did their half to maintain the pop tune alive, giving it a dying metallic rendition for the historical past books. 

It is not usually {that a} cowl tune solidifies a metallic band on a world degree, however right here we’re speaking about Turisas and their model of Boney M‘s “Rasputin”. The folks metallic band reworked this eurodisco monitor and gave it everlasting life, very like the legendary tales of the actual Rasputin. Even when people metallic is not your jam, this cowl is an excessive amount of enjoyable to scoff at. 

Ghost‘s cowl songs at all times appear to return out of nowhere, like with Roky Erickson‘s “If You Have Ghosts” or Imperiet‘s “Bible”. As for straight-up pop, although, “It is a Sin” probably ranks on the high of Ghost‘s many sonic transcriptions. Tobias Forge at all times appears to know methods to Ghost-ify a traditional monitor, and “It is a Sin” sounds prefer it might be an authentic from the Swedish occult act. 

This has no proper to be this good. Toto‘s iconic “Africa” is definitely one of the complicated songs in pop historical past from a vocal concord standpoint, so it takes surgical expertise to carry out. Merely put, Chaos Divine hit this tune out of the park. The vocals are excellent, the guitar solo rips, the manufacturing is attractive, and even the little off-beat drum half within the tune’s verse is incredible. Take a fucking bow, Chaos Divine. 

What a bizarre, bizarre, bizarre selection. It is unbelievable how effectively this cowl works, as Fear Factory seamlessly mix the synth pop traditional with their very own industrial metallic model. Fear Factory‘s “Vehicles” is a masterclass within the artwork of steadiness. Fear Factory stored the guts of the tune intact, modified only a few dynamics, however nonetheless made it their very own. Take notice, bands. That is the way you do it.

I Prevail are underrated for his or her pure songwriting IQ. It is why they’ve develop into a gateway band between the worlds of pop and metallic, and this cowl of Taylor Swift‘s “Clean House” is sort of a big neon signal that reads “come on in.” This factor has 74 million views on YouTube and over 120 million streams on Spotify. It is the largest tune of I Prevail‘s profession and it is actually not from an absence of authentic materials. These guys acquired the sauce.

I did not wish to love this… however god rattling it… it actually, actually do. Steel Panther does hair metallic parodies higher than most hair metallic bands do hair metallic, and now, the identical goes for boy bands. Simply whenever you assume this Backstreet Boys cowl could not get any catchier, Steel Panther hit a key change within the closing refrain that takes “I Need It That Manner” to a different degree. We’re not fucking worthy of this.