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Diet Pepsi

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Ben Platt, Live from 2025 Las Culturistas Culture Awards. Hands down cover version of the year.

I am obsessed – obsessed – with this now.

Any other cover versions which deliver unto the original an improbable new direction?

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      • He sure can.

        The performance is ostensibly comedy; he’s taking the dead-eyed eroticism of the original text and flipping it so that it’s all feeling and melodrama.

        You can see it in the slight smirk on his face in the first verse and the audience reaction when the strings come in – it’s so obviously daft to give Diet Pepsi, of all songs, this sort of treatment.

        But then he hits the chorus, and somewhere in those cries of “say you love, say you love, say you love me” he unexpectedly mines his way down to a sort of emotional truth. By the time he arrives at the line “I like it from the fountain” it sounds less a preference for how one’s soda should be served, more a plea straight from the heart.

        His vocal is a perfect back and forth between irony and earnestness, and I can’t get enough of it.

  4. This made me immediately think of Brian Ibbott and his Coverville podcasts, that I used to listen to about 20 years ago. Amazingly, they are still going, and episode 1545 last week offers this ripe turkey, with Steve Martin seemingly, and spookily channeling Jeffrey Epstein:

    I’d never heard of the Sgt Pepper movie, and the cast list alone puts me off.

    Is it an improbable new direction for the song? Not sure, it’s certainly unimprovable.

    I can recommend Coverville though. Ibbott has a similar indiscriminate love of all and any music that I might associate with KFD or Beany.

  5. I know you probably expect something wacky from me but my love for this duo exceeds any love I have for the outrageous stuff I collect. Better than the original. So bite me.

  6. This must be the most enjoyable cover I heard at Roskilde this summer.

    Not such a radical cover in itself, but great fun to hear Lucy rocking out a little at the end of her exquisite, low-key set.

    • Another Chuck Berry cover.
      This time in ’80s powerpop style.

      Not claiming superior quality or anything. I just like how different it is from the original.

  15. This is always the answer to my favourite cover version. The birth of Goth-Funk. To be honest I didn’t know the Ben E King original until years after I heard this. Very loop friendly drum beat by Budgie too.

  16. What’s that you say? You want Heard It Through the Grapevine done in an acoustic, three-part-harmony style? No problem: the Doug Anthony All Stars have got you covered.

    For my money (don’t hate me, pop kids!), this is more interesting than the original.

    In a similar acoustic vein, Peter, Paul and Mary’s A Soulin is a lovely little song, but Sting’s version (Soul Cake) has a lot more bounce, plus added Christmas carols, trumpet, fiddle, and more harmonies. An example of a cover where more is, well, more.

    • James and Nathan’s version is impeccable and very enjoyable @duco01

      But they re transforming the songs into something very different.

      For example, here’s their take on Buffalo Stance.

      where are… the girls on the block with the nasty curls
      Wearing padded bras, sucking beers through straws
      Dropping down their drawers, where did you get yours?

      It’ s all rather witty. They’ve taken a scruffy mongrel from the street, house-trained it and taken it to the doggy hairdresser.¨And now it’ s ready to attend the tea rooms at Bath and sniff genteel bottoms at the Jane Austen Society.

  21. If you want a really scorchio cover version, it is difficult to better Richie Havens’ take on Lamont Dozier’s Going back to my roots.

    Listening to him introducing it here on German tv. one realises that its earworminess was a mixed blessing.

  22. I actually posted this on the Polyglot thread (to complete silence)…

    The Cantopop singer Faye Wong did a cover of the Cocteau Twins “Bluebeard” but with Chinese lyrics….

    And heres the original….

  27. This Corrosion by The Sisters Of Mercy is a maximalist Jim Steinman kitchen sink and all production that aimed to replicate the vibe of a disco party run by the Borgias. It’s great, but twenty odd years later Diane Birch decided to turn it into a slinky pop soul gospel stomper, and that might be even greater.

  28. Amazing what difference a brass band can make to a song.

    Loving Arms was originally recorded by Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge as a classic honky tonk tune for sobbing into your beer.

    Paul and Jacqui added a Sally Army brass band and some English countryside and created magic.

    Paranoid was originally a scream of despair from a bat-munching Brummie Prince of Darkness.

    This military brass band at Buck House transformed it into a catchy toe tapping tune which would have fitted in nicely on the Home Service

    Seriously, hats off to them. They did a great job of it.

    Which self-respecting Hungarian would not enjoy a brass band cover of the Mode’s Personal Jesus?

    And who could possibly fail to enjoy a magnificent French brass medley of Daft Punk hits?

    Best not to answer that. ICE may be listening.

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