I am in my 40’s now and I’ve not only been on the Internet since 1995, but chronically online for the entire time. The Internet is at the center of nearly everything in my life, including music, but I have been obsessed with music for much longer than the Internet was available to me.
The first song that I can remember hearing was Sara by Starship and I think I may have been in a crib at the time. I was in some sort of napping situation because I remember hearing it before falling asleep.
I love music from the mid to late 80’s, but I know the most about the music from the 90’s and early 2000’s, with the sweet spot landing somewhere in the late 2000’s. Around that time, YouTube was springing up and enveloping the Internet and I was especially obsessed with the relatively unknown musicians I could find posting their stuff on YouTube.
I catch myself revisiting some of them from time to time and that’s what gave me the idea for this post. I just want to post some older YouTube music that you may have never heard before, but also I just selfishly want a list of my favorite stuff from (relatively) back in the day.
The first entry on my list will be, for me, the quintessential early YouTube cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Susanna and the Magical Orchestra. It’s probably my favorite cover of all time and it’s also the oldest video on the list.
When I first listened to it, there were less than 2,000 views and I felt as if though I stumbled upon a buried treasure. I can’t believe that it only ever made it up to 1.3 million views (as of right now) and that it is one of five videos on her channel, which has 1.5k subscribers.
I’ll never forget stumbling across this next video because it was under 1,000 views at the time and I just kind of sat there with my mouth wide open listening to an incredible acoustic cover of “Africa” by Toto being belted out perfectly by a couple of Dad-looking nerds in a very empty bar. My wife and I watched all of their other videos, which were also insane, and talked about going to Denver just to be two of the five people in there witnessing greatness. Nowadays this video has 19M views and that makes a lot more sense.
I love Mighty Mike’s mashup of M83’s “Midnight City” and Men at Work’s “Down Under” so much. It’s the song I revisit the most on YouTube by a mile, other than Danny Carey’s live drumming for Pneuma by Tool. It is an inescapable ear worm with bad enough quality to qualify it for this list. I will watch and listen to this over, and over, and over, and over again.
Then there is Obadiah Parker’s “Hey Ya” which is a cover of Outkast’s hit that goes by the same name. We love a nerdy looking dude with a big ‘ol neck beard, an angel’s voice, and a gift for a-pickin’-and-a-singin’ — not to mention the very original arrangement that suits the song nearly better than the original.
Or maybe you need to have your heart broken? Visit the comment section of José González’ cover of “Heartbeats” by The Knife. It probably has the most views of anything else on this list, but I didn’t want to leave it off. It’s a banger.
From there, we’ll get back to a cover with a relatively small number of views. It’s Iron & Wine’s cover of “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service. I just like it when a couple of people sing badly mixed harmonies into a shitty computer mic and one of them is playing an acoustic guitar way too slow.
What is a list like this without a tribute to Radiohead? What about from a beautiful choir? The cover of “Creep” by Scala & Kolacny Brothers hits the spot. If you’re a fan of The Social Network, you may recognize it from its trailer.
The last one I’ll leave you with the only original music on the list, which wasn’t planned. Turns out I just really love covers. Anyway, this is “Beat the Horse” by Pomplamoose. My wife and I were on the Pomplamoose train very early but I don’t remember why. I think I just happened across it near its release date. You may recognize Jack Conte on the left because he is now the CEO of Patreon.
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