Miscellaneous of the Week: Should Anybody Ever Cover The Beatles?

I love the Arctic Monkeys. And for those of you privileged enough to follow me on Twitter, you may have seen my recent tweet about how I rediscovered how much I love them, around the same time that I rediscovered my love for Mr. Bean, but that’s a different story. They’re a great band, with a unique sound, and they’ve got some cracking tunes that are absolutely perfect for long summery drives through the countryside.

However, quite recently they did something pretty controversial. They covered a classic song from The Beatles, arguably the best band ever to grace our planet. ‘Come Together’, from the album Abbey Road, is catchy, soulful and just plain beautiful. I’ll go out on a limb here – I love the original, and I quite like the cover. It’ll never be better than the original. The only cover that I know of that is actually far better than the original is ‘Hallelujah’. Jeff Buckley reached new realms of beautiful with his cover of Leonard Cohen’s song. (I’m pretty glad that he did as well, as he wrote around eighty verses. Bit much really.)

So, I like the cover, but it’s not a patch on The Beatles. Sorry Monkeys, try harder next time. I’m also really interested to find out what you, the wonderful readers, think about it. Cover or original? Let us know.

@KrissieHowe