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Covers Wish List #3

Welcome to the third installment of this series! If you missed them, you can check out parts 1 and 2 here and here, respectively. Again, this is an ongoing thing I'm doing and I'm enjoying it so far. It's fun trying to think of songs that never, or rarely, get covered and then deciding which current artist could do it best. Each installment will feature 10 songs and then if anyone would like to suggest any, let me know and I'll add it in as a bonus song in a future installment. It can be any song, from any artist in any genre from any time period.

Before I get started, I want to first to tell everyone about a movement going on in country music right now. Some of you may have heard about this already. I'm taking about the "Sixty for Sixty" movement. What is it, you ask? Well, George Strait will be turning 61 on May 18th. So far in his career he has had a total of 59 #1s. Now we're not talking about the same song being released on multiple charts or remixes of songs that chart; we're talking about 59 different songs that all went to #1. He's not called King George for nothing. We're talking about a man who has touched countless lives and influenced so many other artists over the course of his career. An artist who has stayed true to himself all these years;  one of the most loved and respected artists in the genre.

Right now his current single "Give It All We Got Tonight" is #14 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and #11 on the Mediabase country chart. If it keeps climbing like it has been, it will become his 60th #1. And now you see what the "Sixty for Sixty" movement is all about: giving George Strait his 60th #1 while he is still 60. How can you help? Request, request, request. Talk about it. Tweet about it. Check out the movement's website, http://sixtyforsixty.com, for more ideas and information. We have until May 18th. We can do this.

Now let's talk covers. Sticking with the format I've been using: namely, the name of the artist who I'm suggesting the song for will be in bold. The song title and original artist will come next, with a little explanation of why I chose it. To my knowledge none of these songs have ever been covered by any of these artists, but that's not to say that it's never happened. Just that I've never seen or heard about it and would like to.

My first choice:
Lady Antebellum: "Dancing in the Street" by Martha and the Vandellas. Mainly because I know that they'd do a great job with it and I know it'd be fun to watch.

Chris Young: "Life Turned Her That Way" by Little Jimmy Dickens. As much as I'd like to see all the songs get covered in this series, there's some I want to hear a lot more than others. This being one of them. It's a fantastic song with a wonderful lyric that deserves to be remade. And I think Chris is the perfect person to do it. He'd sing the mess out of it and would nail the delivery. I just know he would. I can't even say how much I'd love to hear him try it. I want this one bad.

Kristy Lee Cook: "Walk On the Water" by Britt Nicole. I really like this song and think it would suit Kristy's voice very well. Maybe she'd country it up a little bit; I don't know, I just see it being a good song for her.

Casey James: "Mandolin Rain" by Bruce Hornsby. Yeah, no big explanation here. It's an interesting song and I'd like to see Casey put his spin on it.

Luke Bryan: "Motownphilly" by Boyz II Men. And here you thought all my suggestions were going to be fairly normal this time. I gotta have at least one that's a little out there. Perhaps way out there in this case. Why do I want to see Luke and his band do this? Simply because it would be extremely entertaining. To say the least. I think they'd have a lot of fun with it and I think it'd be a blast to watch. I can only imagine the dance moves this would inspire. They could even bring Black Mike out for the little rap part. Yeah, I've thought this through.

Miranda Lambert: "Cold Hearted" by Paula Abdul. This was one Paula's Forever Your Girl album and I used to listen to all the time growing up. This was one of my favorite songs on the album, a bit of a guilty pleasure song lately. And a song that I believe would suit Miranda well. Maybe surprisingly so. She'd need to give it a major makeover, but I think it'd be great.

Maggie Rose: "I'm Scared" by Duffy. Just like the songs I chose for Lady Antebellum, Kristy and Casey, I think this would be a good song for her. A very good song in fact.

Lauren Alaina: "Slipped Away" by Avril Lavigne. I'm curious to see what response, if any, this suggestion gets. I was listening to this song a while back and for some reason Lauren came to mind. It seemed like an odd choice at first, but I don't know. In thinking about it I think that Lauren could do a really good job with it. I can't really explain why I think so. I just do.

Brett Eldredge: "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin. I've gotten into the habit of doing searches for each artist and the song I picked for them to see if anything pops up, to try and see if they've done it before. If they have and if there's a video of them doing it in concert or what have you, that choice gets scrapped. In this instance, it would appear that Brett grew up listening to people like Bobby Darin and has done this song in the past. And apparently it was this song that got him interested in performing for other people. I had no idea. But seeing as how it doesn't look like he's ever done it in concert, I decided to keep it on the list. Because I really want to hear him do it and I'm sure my fellow Brett fans would back me up here. I bet he does a terrific job with it and I think it's time for him to revisit it, for one of his YouTube couch sessions perhaps? Just throwing that out there as a suggestion should he happen upon this post.

Jerrod Niemann: "Lone Ranger" by Mark Salling. I've done this post like I did the other two: namely allowing the shuffle feature to determine which songs I include and in what order. And I'd forgotten about this choice. To say it came out of left field would be an understatement. I will be shocked if anyone reading has heard this song. Mark Salling used to play Puck on Glee, for those who didn't know. Not sure if he still does or not, but regardless, "Lone Ranger" is on a CD he released in 2010 called Pipe Dreams. This song is a little out there; not gonna lie. It'd be interesting to see what exactly Jerrod would do with it. Very much so.

That'll do it for this time. Look out for more installments of this series and let me know any songs that you have on your covers wish list. Thank you for reading.













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