Recently I wrote a three-part essay about my favorite covers of previously recorded songs.  And while the feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive, a number of readers pointed-out (and rightly so) that I didn’t include any of the acts that almost exclusively perform other people’s songs.

So, here they are. Some are performance artists, some headliners in their own right, and others still tributes. The one thing they all share is that they make me happy. I hope they do the same for you.

[Note: While you won't find the songs by the kids from Glee, any of the collected works of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, or most noteably Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gormet's brilliant lounge version of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" below, they all bring a smile to my face.]

Nouvelle Vague covering Joy Division is rather akin to Claudine Longet covering Randy Newman. It shouldn’t work, and yet it’s compelling and pretty, in a wispy, thin-voiced, French lounge kind of way.

Around the turn of the century, my friend, Bill, turned me onto this album of electro-latino covers of Kraftwerk songs, by a group called Señor Coconut Y Su Conjunto. As if that wasn’t kooky/fabulous enough, it turned-out that Señor Coconut was actually a German music producer named Uwe Schmidt. Who knew? Anyhow, Señor Coconuts’ cumbia version of “Trans Europe Express” is a marvelously executed masterstroke.

Richard Cheese (and his band, Lounge Against the Machine) is fun, funny, smarmy, and sharp. His interaction with the audiences is terrific, and his stage presence is fantastic. But it’s the way he wittily transposes the most hip of the hop into extremely white-bread ditties that really does him proud. To wit, his lounge version of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” never fails to crack me up.

When someone like Paul Anka covers anyone’s song, you know he’s gonna do it his way. (Get it? His way?) His 2005 take on modern hits re-arranged for his to sing with a big band sound was divine. Sure, Anka is about as far away from Kurt Cobain as one can get on the musical spectrum, but he’s up there, owning it.

When I first heard The Mike Flowers Pops singing their lounge version of Oasis’ hit “Wonderwall,” I fell out. Would anyone get it? (Yes.) Was I a freak for adoring it, so? (No.) The song and the group are responsible for kicking-off the entire lounge movement, and did so with verve, class, and an eye to detail that remain the tops, to this day. Bravo!

BONUS! BONUS! BONUS!

Kenny Mellman as "Herb" and Justin Vivian Bond as "Kiki DuRane"

No list of this sort would be complete without Kiki & Herb. If you’re not familiar with the octogenarian cabaret duo of boozy floozy vocalist Kiki DuRane and her lifelong friend and accompanist Herb (portrayed by Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman, respectively), what are you waiting for? Their David Foster-produced Kiki & Herb Will Die for You: Live at Carnegie Hall was a tour de force, and their performances on Broadway earned them a Tony nomination.

And while some might simplistically categorize the duo as over-the-top comedians, I say it’s their mixture of pathos and wit and irreverence and political incorrectness that combine with that humor (that’s three shades darker than midnight) that makes them just right. And even though Bond and Mellman are no longer performing together, we can always pray for a reunion. Maybe for my 40th birthday..? As she implores at the end of the video, “Don’t turn your back, on Kiki!”

Get into it!