I was reading Time magazine online this morning and read this article about a collaboration between U2 and Green Day to benefit the Music Rising charity that The Edge helped found. They have recorded a cover of “The Saints Are Coming” by the Skids. This reminded me of another benefit to covers — it’s neutral ground for collaboration. Green Day and U2 have such different sounds to their original music, that I had wondered what sort of song they could come up with when thrown together. This eliminates that problem, but still will give a great tool to combine the sounds of the two bands.

Another of my favorite recent examples of this kind of collaboration was when My Chemical Romance and The Used covered Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” to also benefit victims of the tsunami in Indonesia. Love them or hate them on their own, that collaboration was one of my favorite musical moments. I especially like the video, because I think it illustrates some of my previous post’s points perfectly. They are obviously having such a great time, and that song is one that is so accessible to even kids who weren’t born when it was released. There’s something that’s just giddy-inducing about watching two bands just jam together and have a great time with a song they obviously both enjoy.

The comments to the previous post got me thinking more about covers, and some recent covers to come out. Lenneth mentioned Heart’s cover of “Stairway To Heaven” sounding exactly the same as the original, and she reminded me of two songs I was hearing frequently on my radio station of choice, Z104.5. Both Limp Bizkit’s cover of “Behind Blue Eyes,” and The Ataris’ cover of “The Boys of Summer,” at least to my ears, sound virtually indiscernible from the originals. My gut reaction to that is to ask, “Why bother?” Then again, I answered that question before, too. There could have been a particular affinity for the song, or it could have been chosen for an express purpose. It has meaning then for the artist, and likely for the listener who has never heard the originals, but perhaps not so much someone who has heard the originals.

Danielle mentioned U2’s cover of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” as one of her favorites, and I have to agree. The fact that the song is recorded live only adds to the energy of the tribute and really shows the influence of such music on early U2. “Helter Skelter” is one of those songs that is covered often, although I think the stalwart trivia fact is that another Beatles tune, “Yesterday,” is actually the most often covered song out there. (I’m not sure how you determine that, actually, but I’ve heard it enough times and Google seems to back me up.) It’s at the very least a tribute-album staple (which, by the way, are of course the mother-lodes for cover tunes, both the good and the bad).

I couldn’t resist revisiting this subject so soon. I had such a great time on Monday putting together my block of cover tunes for my show (for the curious, the block included: Crazy Train by Bullet For My Valentine, Tainted Love by Alkaline Trio, Roxanne by Fall Out Boy, Message in a Bottle by 30 Seconds To Mars, and Rebel Yell by Kill Hannah, among others). I may have to put together another block tonight. Any suggestions? Or since I touched on tribute albums, are there any favorite tribute albums, or one you wish would be put out? I definitely intend to continue the discussion tonight on the air at Radio Ugly, 8-10 pm Eastern, so check it out!