The Used, A7X, Stardeath and More Go Crazy For Covers

From the dawn of music, covers have always been used to pay tribute to the greatest artists.  But recording a song made famous by another artist is a delicate matter, and it can either be really awesome or really awful (311's cover of The Cure's "Love Song" anybody?). The Used has recently taken on Talking Heads, and more bands are now jumping on the bandwagon.

Matters such as the band's past and current popularity, popularity of the song, and the changes the band doing the cover should all be taken into consideration.  Too similar and the song becomes boring.  Too different and it's unrecognizable (although, sometimes that's a good thing).  But the worst is when a band messes up a wildly popular song from a very influential band. 

Warner Music Group recently released Covered: A Revolution in Sound, a compilation of current bands from the label covering past bands' hits.  Against Me! did The Replacements' "Here Comes a Regular," The Flaming Lips were joined by Stardeath and White Dwarfs for Madonna's "Borderline," Avenged Sevenfold took care of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," and, in a complete departure, The Used, who are out with a couple new albums this summer, recorded Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House."

While Warner Music released the album to commemorate their 50 years as a music label, other bands, such as Four Year Strong, covering popular songs of the 90's are coming out with their own albums of covers. (And does anyone remember Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits' covers?)

With the recent releases of Covered: A Revolution in Sound and Punk Goes Pop 2 (of the ridiculously awesome Punk Goes... collection, try Punk Goes Crunk), and No Doubt's cover of Adam Ant's "Stand and Deliver," a few questions about the art of covering come to mind:

1) What makes a good cover?

2) Who did it best?

3) Who did it worst?