Four Bands. One Song.

 Doing a cover version can be tricky.  Assuming you're not blatantly taking the piss (Every Thrash Metal pop cover, ever.) then the band want to put their own stamp on the song while still retaining a little of the original flavour.  Go too much to either side and you either end up with a note-for-note rerecording or you've just done exactly the same song you would write except somebody else did the lyrics.

  What I'm going to post tonight is four songs. First the original and then three different bands doing their own interpretation of it. See what you think.

Tears For Fears - Shout (1985)

  "Angry" synthpop is a definite rarity but this is a classic piece of punchy 80s pop with lyrics that can be interpreted differently depending on whether you think it's about one person expressing themselves or a social protest song. Listening to it again I'm also reminded how very effective the guitar solo was. 

Disturbed - Shout 2000 (2000)

 It was apparently compulsory for every Nu-Metal band to have at least one 80s pop cover under their belts. This was Disturbed's contribution.   Dave Draiman and co ramp up the riffing and groove as you might expect, and turn "Shout" into an angry, uplifting call to arms.   

Atrocity - Shout (1997)

  

Atrocity may have started off as a Death Metal band but by 1997 had evolved into something midway between Gothic and Industrial metal. When they released an album of 80s cover versions this song was a natural fit for their style. 

 Drafting in Liv Kristine from Theatre Of Tragedy to provide her trademark angelic vocals was a clever move as it gave this version a further healthy dose of melody and atmosphere.

Interesting that so far everybody has decided to hang on to the "ding-a-ding-ding" intro.

The last and most recent cover is one I stumbled across recently.

I'd been poking about  on Youtube, exploring something called "Synthwave" and found this song, (which isn't my usual thing but I really liked it so here we go. )

Scandroid (Shout (2016)

 From what I gather "Synthwave" is a musical form that thinks "80s Pop and 80s game music was awesome. How about we bring that back?"  Possibly it's from an alternative reality where 1985 lasted forever. Anyway, I've been quite impressed by some of the stuff I've heard and this is currently my favourite Synthwave song.  If possible, it's even more 80s than the original!  I approve.  

So which version did you like best? Are there any cool versions that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

That's all folks.