Rhino’s Got You Covered: Faith No More, Teddy Pendegrass, Candi Staton, and the Judybats

If it’s Wednesday, it must be time to dip back into the Rhino vault and deliver four cover songs that you may or may not have heard before. Let’s get to it, shall we?

•    Faith No More, “I Started a Joke” (1995): It’s a little weird to kick off this piece with this track, since it was actually the final single released by Faith No More until their 2015 reunion album, SOL INVICTUS, but how can you miss a chance to start an article by talking about “I Started a Joke”? By the time this Bee Gees cover came out as the token single for the band’s best-of album, the band was so broken up that none of the members even appeared in the video. (Someone who did, however, was future Bilbo Baggins portrayer Martin Freeman.) It’s disconcertingly different from most Faith No More songs, but it’s a solid version of the song nonetheless.

•    Teddy Pendegrass, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” (1991): While there’s no question that Al Green delivered the most famous R&B cover over this track, the late Mr. Pendegrass did a fine job when he covered it for his ’91 album TRULY BLESSED.

•    Candi Staton, “Nights on Broadway” (1976): For all the artists who had hits with songs written by the brothers Gibb during the ‘70s, not a  lot of them managed to have success with songs that the Gibbs were also having success with. Staton was an exception to the rule, earning a top-10 single in the UK and a top-20 hit on the Billboard R&B Singles chart. (It almost made it onto the Hot 100, but not quite: it bubbled under at #102, but then it sank.)

•    The Judybats, “Jive Talkin’” (1994): We’re not going to play this up as the best Bee Gees cover of all time when we suspect that the band themselves would laugh in our faces if we made such a claim, but it’s certainly worth a spin.