Dartmouth Soundoff: Acoustic Covers, Pt. 2 — The Best of Youtube
Last week, I posted some acoustic covers by well-established artists. You don't have to be well-established, however, to cover a song. Acoustic covers are a significant portion of YouTube videos and range from middle schoolers who don't really know how to play guitar to high-budget, high-quality covers that leave you wondering why the performer doesn't have a more substantial career.
For most of the artists in the latter category, it would appear that they are posting well-known covers to bolster their own careers. Admittedly, I'm more interested in perusing their cover catalog than hearing their original work, but at least their names are getting out there. In writing this post, I sifted through a lot of weird stuff on YouTube (consider this a warning: don’t watch painful Nicki Minaj covers). Anyway, here are a few of the keepers that might be worth exploring during the pre-finals lull.
Jake Coco ft. Sara Niemetz — “Give Me Love” (Ed Sheeran)
First off, I don't know if anyone collects any official statistics on this, but I would be willing to bet that Ed Sheeran is probably one of the most covered artists by YouTube amateurs, especially if you were to measure percent gain from 2011 to 2012. Jake Coco has over 44 million channel views and has posted dozens of both original and cover songs. He seems well-connected in the YouTube cover community, pairing up with other similar artists.
Jaymee Dee — “Pumped Up Kicks” (Foster the People)
The twist her jazzy voice puts on the song makes her sound like a contestant for NBC's The Voice (or something like that). Her take is unique and the track is well-mixed, making for a solid cover.
Boyce Avenue — “Fast Car” (Tracy Chapman)
It was hard to pick which video of Boyce Avenue's to post; “Fast Car” just happens to be my favorite this week. Boyce Avenue is possible the highest-profile YouTube cover artist, with over 845 million channel views (more than 8 times Avicii’s number) across over 100 cover videos. Alejandro Manzano, their lead singer and the most prominently featured member in the cover videos, has a gentle voice while sort of looking like that math teacher in middle school all the girls had a crush on. Like Coco, Boyce Avenue teams up with a number of artists, both diversifying their work and showing their networking abilities amongst other YouTube celebs. They even did a coveronce with South African mega-cover drummer Cobus Potgieter.
Jon D and Julia Sheer — “Little Talks” (Of Monsters and Men)
While the vocals on this track are good, they're not all that distinct. What does make this cover stand out is the guitar arrangement during the verses. Unfortunately, we don't see any guitar playing in the video, so I can't even give credit to the guitarist on the track.
Sunday Girl — “Time to Pretend” (MGMT)
This is probably my favorite cover on this list, despite having one of the lowest view counts of the videos on the column this week. Sunday Girl, whose real name is Jade Williams, sounds sort of like Lenka, so it was a wise choice to cover a band like MGMT who has a similar fan base, but obviously very different music and production styles.
Javier Dunn — “Animal” (Miike Snow)
Dunn, instead of having warmth in his voice of Boyce Avenue or Jake Coco, reminds me of a less creepy version of Gary Jules. The not-quite acoustic production makes for a nice, unique take of Snow's original track.