Bardcore: Medieval-Style Covers of Pop Songs

With time to burn during ye olde pandemic, practitioners of a musical genre called bardcore have been taking pop songs and medieval-izing their lyrics and tunes. The three examples embedded above are Radiohead’s Creep, Jolene by Dolly Parton, and Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones. Here’s how Creep starts off:

When thou wert here before
I could not look thee in the eye
Thou art like an angel
Thy skin makes me cry
Thou float’st like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
Thou’rt so very special
But I am a creep
I am a weirdo
What in hell am I doing here?
I do not belong here

Here’s a playlist full of bardcore favorites.

Wikipedia and most of the news articles about bardcore date the genre to April 2020, but I found a cover of System of a Down’s Toxicity from 2017 and a medieval cover of Metallica’s One from 2014 by Belarusian band Stary Olsa, which released a whole album of medieval covers of classic rock hits in 2016.

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