10 Greatest Covers Of Beatles Songs
7. The Breeders - Happiness Is A Warm Gun
One of the bleakest, grimiest songs in The Beatles’ catalogue, Happiness Is A Warm Gun is one of Lennon’s White Album high points. Based on a gun magazine’s headline, the complex arrangements cover violence, sex, and drugs in equal measure. The song isn’t acoustically aggressive, but Lennon’s sneer adds real bite.
On their version, The Breeders turned things up a couple of notches. Produced by veteran noisenik Steve Albini, the cover runs with the quiet-loud dynamics that the Beatles used here and that the alt-rock scene had made a cornerstone of their output. Everything leaps up in the mix, the guitars crunching, the drums pounding with the ferocity the song merits.
Over all this is the eerily detached vocal of Kim Deal. Forever the coolest person in music, Deal captures the essence of the song perfectly, dealing with difficult, dangerous subject matter as though it was nothing.
The track remains a part of The Breeders’ setlist nearly 30 years after its recording and exemplifies the best kind of cross-genre covering - not a shred of novelty to it, just a great band and song fitting together perfectly.