Talk:List of cover versions of Beatles songs

AMERICAN IDOL

I'm sorry, am I the only one who feels that American Idol contestants shouldn't be included in this category? It pissed me off when they did Beatles week. I don't watch that show because I feel it's pointless, but I did hear some of the clips and my GOD - Most of these idiots didn't know any Beatles songs going into it, and now they're defiling these classics on national TV. I couldn't see Archuleta on this list without saying something, this is ridiculous.

Classics wouldn't be classics if people didn't try them out for themselves. Tell us that you've never sung along to your favorite Beatles tunes before and we wouldn't believe you. It's easy to discount any strength in your arguments when you espouse such negativity and libel, but I'll try to address your concerns from a neutral point of view...

• Any American Idol contestant who is notable enough for their own Wikipedia article is also notable enough to be entered on this list once they've covered a Beatles song. Wikipedia isn't about who you like, dislike, approve of, or disapprove of. It's about facts. That David Archuleta covered a Beatles song is fact, unfortunate or otherwise.
• Presently this page is an incomplete list of artists who have covered Beatles songs, period. The list of artists who have actually covered Beatles songs must be interminably longer because our standards for this page include both released and unreleased material. If we were to set a standard that in order to be included the artist must have released the material (just playing it during a non-broadcasted concert isn't sufficient), the list would be shorter, however even under this standard, I think the American Idol acts would still qualify. —  X  S  G  16:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Preamble

Preamble: About 2 months ago, I specifically spent many nights identifying all the cover versions I could from my MP3 collection. At Xmas, I got a disk with a copy of Billy J. Kramer's version of Do You Want To Know A Secret. In order to find out who covered who, I ended up at this webpage. That easily resvoled my query, but I became aware that I had many Beatles covers from artists not listed.

I have no clue about correct Policies, procedures & formatting etc for articles here, so I went for the `discussion' option. I spent 10 minutes looking at instructions, & now my brain hurts. Those who know what they're doing on this site may use or delete any of this as appropriate.

I will put up the list I have. Some of them will be ones implied by the artist list, many aren't

In addition to this list, there was an Album released called All This & WWII, which had many artists covering The Beatles songs. There was a copyright issue with it. I think it is where Rod Stewart's Get Back & Elton John's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds first appeared. I have a copy of the record, but it's 5 hours drive South of where I am at the moment. If wanted, when I have access to it I can give a full track list, or someone may find a website

It also had 3 songs by Leo Sayer, at least 1 of which I think appears on his Hits compilations. I found this much about it on his website. It may need removing from here for copyright reasons, but in the context of the discussion I've included it for any followup.

In December 1975, Leo released a Christmas single in the U.K., this time a cover of the Beatles “Let It Be”. It was produced by Adam and Russ Ballard and was not a success, but later turned up on producer Lou Riesner’s concept album “All This And World War Two”, released in early 1976. The record was the soundtrack for a bizarre movie featuring various artists singing Beatles songs to footage from the second world war. Leo also sang “I Am The Walrus” and “The Long And Winding Road” to the accompaniment of a symphony orchestra.

Here's my list anyway.

A hard day's night (Hoodoo Gurus), A Hard Day's Night (Peter Sellers), Back in the USSR (live) (Dead Kennedys), Day Tripper (Cheap Trick), Dear Prudence (Siouxsie & the Banshees), Eleanor Rigby (Zoot), Get Back (Rod Stewart), Happiness Is A Warm Gun (The Gun Mix) (U2), Happiness Is a Warm Gun (Tori Amos), Happiness Is A Warm Gun (World Party), Help (Bananarama), Help (Alternate Take) (Deep Purple), Help (Deep Purple), Helter Skelter (Live) (U2), Helter Skelter (Live) (Pat Benatar), I wanna be your man (Suzi Quatro), In my life (Jose Feliciano), It's only love (Brian Ferry), Lady Madonna (Tommy Emmanuel), Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Elton John), Magical Mystery Tour (Cheap Trick), Michelle (Tommy Emmanuel), Nowhere man (live) (Sherbet), Revolution (The Radiators), She came in through the bathroom window (live) (Joe Cocker), She Loves You (Peter Sellers), She's a woman (Jeff Beck), Tomorrow Never Knows (The Grateful Dead), With a little help from my friends (Santana), You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Eddie Vedder), Do You Want To Know A Secret (Billy J. Kramer, with The Dakotas)

Other known covers that I don't have:

Tomorrow never knows - Phil Collins (Album: Face Value), Dear Prudence - Doug Parkinson

I hope this is helpful to someone. If I had any experience at these things, I'd try integrating my info with yours, so it showed what tracks were covered.

Cheers

Phil - luddite@mail.com

03:59, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

These are now all included in the article. Feel free to add any album info that is missing. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Bing Crosby

Where's Bing Crosby's "Hey Jude"? M B-G 203.171.197.129 (talk) 11:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

All This And World War II

You would do well to check out the movie soundtrack for "All This And World War II" (1976) because the movie contained World War II footage set to the tune of Beatles songs...all done by other artists. Even Dolly Parton had one on there. Henry Gross did "Help!" and there were many other different covers of Beatles tunes.

Marilyn Manson

He/they covered Beatles songs, especially during their pre-rock star status. James:The Four Faced (talk) 16:01, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The point?

What's the point in doing this page at all if it's incomplete? The very first song I looked for was Dollar's "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" - in the UK it's probably one of the better known covers since it reached the top 10 in the charts - and yet it's not even there! Instead it decides to include Abba - whose version was probably never even properly recorded--Tuzapicabit (talk) 00:50, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

We all got together (yes, it was a grand conspiracy) to spite you, Tuzapicabit. But in all seriousness, the page is incomplete because you haven't added what you know to it yet. Please do. —  X  S  G  08:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Notability of this article is not asserted

Notability of this article is not asserted. I will tag in a few days as such if there isn't at least an attempt to establish notibility from verifiable sources. (Yes, before someone say's "It's the Beatles, man!", I'm not saying the facets of Beatle topics are not notable...only that this article doesn't not establish such within itself. — fcsuper ^{(How's That?, That's How!)} _{(Exclusionistic Immediatist )} — 01:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Curious. On what basis are you making the assertion that this article needs to assert notability? I'm familiar with Speedy Delete A7, which states that articles about a real person, organization, or web content must indicate why its subject is important or significant, however this article isn't about a real person, organization, or web content, and the standard of importance and significance is explicitly lower than the standard of notability. Since this article does follow the guidelines of WP:LISTS, I think you may be confusing the different guidelines for articles versus lists. I could see you proposing this as an AfD in order to determine whether lists of this nature are encyclopedic and belong in Wikipedia, but... what kind of notability are you looking for? —  X  S  G  04:20, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, you are correct. I've seen other criticisms of lists before and perhaps misinterpreted the complaint in those instances. I've not dealt with lists on Wikipedia first hand in detail. I won't come here to see this particular topic, which seems a bit specific and an unlikely topic to be searched, in my mind. Maybe that's what I'm really trying to get addressed. However, I don't desire to make this article an AfD candidate, so nothing more from me. — fcsuper ^{(How's That?, That's How!)} _{(Exclusionistic Immediatist )} — 04:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

See, I discovered this list yesterday because I wanted to see how many Beatles tunes Joe Cocker has covered... it seemed to be so many. I was quite thankful the list existed. You do bring up an important point, however, and I thank you for it. All information in Wikipedia ought to be verifiable, either by link to other content within Wikipedia (which in turn has a citation) or by a citation, and lists such as this one are no exception. I'm going to begin poring through the entries to find sources, noting ones that I can't find with a {{fact}}. In a few weeks, if the unsourced entries haven't been straightened out, I'll strike them. —  X  S  G  05:32, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Citation progress... thank you!

I want to thank everyone who has been assisting in finding sources for all of the entries in this list. I have tremendous gratitude that I'm not working alone! —  X  S  G  05:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Problem with article

here is something wrong with this article. Part of the entries is below the references instead of where they belong. Is this because the article is too long? Should it be split into two articles?--Sylvia Anna (talk) 11:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I've found the mistake. Someone had forgotten a "</ref>". Article is fine now.--Sylvia Anna (talk) 14:07, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Silliness...

You know, I've put a lot of effort into this list, but... I'm starting to think that it's just silliness. The artists listed here are a fraction of the artists who are notable and have covered the Beatles. There's no way we're going to be able to keep up, finding references, etc. It's futile! —  X  S  G  05:13, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Not silliness, in fact I was thinking this is one of the more worthwhile of the Wiki list articles. So, your good work has not unnoticed. Drawing a comparison to classical music, the interpretation (and recording) can make all the difference; often classical composers did not play the same piece twice the same way -- it's only to be expected that others would play their pieces quite differently. (I'm trying to remember who it who said that the best performance of their music was done by someone else -- one of the early 20th century composers?) Continuing that comparison, then not every Beatles song is equally good (or perhaps even, particularly good at all...say "Little Child"...the usual suspects) -- any more than everything written by Mozart or Beethoven is of the same standard. So, we might decide that a hack version of a Beatles song that wasn't so great in the first place, is not really musically notable. And that may be what you're responding to. I think, for example, that Petula Clark is a much underrated singer (and songwriter), however, her rendition of "We Can Work It Out" is so painful, I could hardly listen to it, and there are far worse musicians than her on this list. (William Shatner? Mae West? -- perhaps her version of "Day Tripper" was more campy than bad, per se.)

The value, of course, is that now that I've read the list, I'll go looking for them. "The Who"? Oh, yeah! I'd forgotten Dylan did any. I'd listen to Johnny Cash's "In My Life", although it really doesn't seem like his kind of song.

The pragmatic problem is that there are hundreds of covers. (Hundreds for "Yesterday", alone, aren't there?)

Maybe the thing to do is limit the list to covers that are themselves somehow notable? Did anyone get killed as a result of Pat Benatar singing "Helter Skelter"? Ahem. Piano non troppo (talk) 16:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Not covers, but giveaways

Do songs that were written for other artists, or which the Beatles never did a release belong in this list? (Granted, there aren't that many of them.) "I Wanna Be Your Man" was written for the Stones. I forget the disposition of the "Peter and Gordon" songs, but wasn't one of them written "not for the Beatles?". Piano non troppo (talk) 16:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I imagine not. That doesn't meet the definition of a cover version. - Richfife (talk) 22:53, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

That would be on a separate list of Giveaways by members of the Beatles. :) — fcsuper ^{(How's That?, That's How!)} _{(Exclusionistic Immediatist )} — 22:07, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Removed giveaways from this list. GoingBatty (talk) 04:18, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

List should include the album

List should include the album (or other source) of the cover. What is the point of knowing that (for example) "The Donnas" covered "Drive My Car", unless you can also supply the information that this cover was included on the 2005 tribute album This Bird Has Flown? Before this list gets too big, it should be better formated so that enough information can be added to locate each cover. Unionsoap (talk) 03:59, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

A shorter list

A shorter list would be "Artists who haven't covered a Beatles song" Esasus (talk) 00:13, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

What's with all the useless "citation needed" tags? Information is very easy to confirm.

Instead of tagging something just Google the name of the musician and the name of the song, in quotation marks. "Tori Amos" "Let it Be" See how easy it is? Do you want a link to the official websites of each band, where it list the songs of their albums? Or a YouTube video where you can confirm the words of the song are from the original Beatles song? Dream Focus 02:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

A shorter list -- proposal 2

How about excluding covers that were not released, i.e., exclude live covers that were not issued on a live recording? Otherwis, this list will eventually grow to include every notable pop/rock artist born after 1950. — John Cardinal (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure about excluding live covers. But at least, artist without a wikipedia article should not be in the list —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.118.15.34 (talk) 17:08, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed - removing artists without a Wikipedia article from the list GoingBatty (talk) 01:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

You and one anonymous editor agreed, but that's hardly consensus. We need more input. We should not include audition performances on American Idol, live performances from any other audition show, or any other live performance that was not recorded and released. The list is already very long, and adding all such performances, even limited to artists with a WP article, is impractical and not particularly useful to readers. If we include live performances, do we enter a row for every performance? If not, why not? If no particular performance is notable, why is the collection of them notable? If an artist performs the song live once, is that worth including? I'd wager that every English-speaking artist with a WP article who achieved success between 1966 and 1996 has covered a Beatles song live. Many of those performances may have been before the artist was famous, but if we include live performances without any criteria, then all those artists are eligible to be listed here. — John Cardinal (talk) 20:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I should make it clear that my comment above was not in opposition to excluding entries from artists who do not have a WP article. I agree with that. My comment is about your re-inclusion of American Idol auditions where you referred to the talk page. So far, two editors have rejected American Idol performances, and as far as I can tell, two have supported it. Given the article excludes them prior to the recent addition, we should return the article to the status quo until a clear consensus to change it is reached. — John Cardinal (talk) 20:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

A sortable table?

Maybe a sortable table would be a better structure for the article:

Artist	Song	Release
Jeff Beck	"A Day in the Life"	In My Life
Oasis	"I Am the Walrus" (live)	The Masterplan
Oasis	"Helter Skelter" (live)	Familiar to Millions
Jamie Cullum	"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"	BBC Radio 2 Sgt. Pepper 40th anniversary

OK, admittedly it'd be a lot of tedious work... --Nick R^Talk 23:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

fold out menus for easier navigation

Click show to see message example

Content placed here. Do it for with either each letter, or combine letters for those not as long as the rest if that looks better. Would that make it easier to navigate? Since it is tagged as too long to navigate easily by some, would this help those who don't like using their scroll bar? Dream Focus 13:49, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Guns n' Roses - Come Together

I got rid of this entry because it never happened. It was performed live by Axl Rose and Bruce Springsteen once in 1994. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.215.121.104 (talk) 01:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Citations

What is with the citation requests? I mean, either Why bother? or Why aren't all of the entries referenced or requested? I thought i'd look up everyone's sixth favourite band, because i could remember a couple of their covers, but thought there were more, and precisely none of their five covers have a reference, and one of them has a cite request. That's nonsense. My personal choice would be to enter (in the list) the album it is from or available on; that information could be put in the reference section, though, if that would be preferable ~ it would make the references as long as the list, unfortunately, so is less compact. At this moment, i will give a reference for the one request i found above, something more permanent, however, needs to be done. Cheers, Lindsay^Hi 04:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Added album titles or other references, and removed citation requests GoingBatty (talk) 05:54, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Anyone mind a table change?

Anyone mind if I change the tables to remove the sorting so I can use rowspans instead?

From this:

Artist	Song	Year	Release
Aerosmith	"Helter Skelter"	1991	Pandora's Box
Aerosmith	"Come Together"	1978	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (film)
Alvin and the Chipmunks	"A Hard Day's Night"	1964	The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits
Alvin and the Chipmunks	"P.S. I Love You"	1964	The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits
Alvin and the Chipmunks	"I Saw Her Standing There"	1964	The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits

to this:

Artist	Song	Year	Release
Aerosmith	"Helter Skelter"	1991	Pandora's Box
	"Come Together"	1978	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (film)
Alvin and the Chipmunks	"A Hard Day's Night"	1964	The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits
	"P.S. I Love You"
	"I Saw Her Standing There"

I'd rather not see the table changed to use rowspans. Rowspans make it difficult to maintain the table, and they change it from a regular format to an irregular format that makes it harder to scan and read.

I don't care too much about the sort feature; with the table split into subtables, the sort is not as useful as it would be on a single, unified table. — John Cardinal (talk) 15:49, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the sort is to some extent still useful as one can see how many artists have covered certain song 17:03, 1 March 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.118.10.217 (talk)

Does it have to be sorted by covering artist?

I came to the list looking for covers of, for example, "From Me to You" Can't it be sortable by song title? As it is now, I can sort by song title for covering artists who start with B. How is that helpful to anybody?

Or is it just that the list is too long to be sortable as a whole? In which case, I think that by covering artist is the wrong way to sort it.

Listmeister (talk) 17:47, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

The article used to be called List of artists who have covered The Beatles, which is why it's organized by artist. It would be nice to sort by song title, but it's also nice to have the table of contents. Suggestions anyone? GoingBatty (talk) 02:47, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Done :) rm 'w avu 01:52, 19 October 2012 (UTC)