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Finnish Bluegrass Band Covers AC/DC’s Thunderstruck

This video is 9 years old and has 169 million views so I’m possibly the last person on Earth to see it,1 but I ran across a clip of it on Instagram the other day and just had to share. Steve ‘n’ Seagulls is a country band from Finland that went viral for their covers of classic rock tunes, including AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”:

I love the way this starts off โ€” and it seems to have become somewhat of a bit in subsequent videos. Open Culture has more in a post from August 2014. Kottke.org: only the freshest viral content for you!

See also AC/DC’s Thunderstruck on the bagpipes, ukelele cover of Thunderstruck, and Thunderstruck accompanied by a washing machine. (Does the internet get any better than this?)

  1. The Earth’s present population being, of course, 169,000,001.

Discussion  12 comments

Chris Coyier

Any Modest Mouse fans gotta check out Dark Horse's whole album of bluegrass covers of them. I think the whole Bluegrass-covers-of-popular-thing can get real cheezy real quick and demean the genre a little, but Pickin' on Modest Mouse is a damn masterpiece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WB5zNeHI98

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

So glad you shared this! I had never seen it and now I'm going deep into their library.

Tim Spellman

Here is 2CELLOS rather energetic cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT3SBzmDxGk

Brady J. Frey

This one's also fun; more proof we need an up-ranking on comments:).

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Richard Steck

Another great cover on a Guzheng: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=564u39PJfUI

Brady J. Frey

I loved this more.

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Jason KottkeMOD

Over on Mastodon, people are sharing more AC/DC covers and country/bluegrass covers.

Brady J. Frey

I had a visceral reaction to this one. I am impressed while simultaneously feeling the sensation of my skin crawling.

Denkfix

I happen to know this for a couple of years and I find myself rewatching it on a somewhat regular basis because I just love it so much. Had anyone asked me who brought it to my attention I would have said: "Don't quite remember, must have been Jason Kottke!"

Jo Ma

Went to see them live right before the pandemic. It was a very fun show.
Catch'em in your sometime:

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Tim

I love bluegrass covers. It's a genre that lends itself to covers remarkably well. I highly recommend the Cleverlys. They have a ton of fun covers and the fun conceals some great playing. This might be my favorite: bluegrass Gangnam Style. Nothing like Korean sung with a strong Southern accent.

I also particularly like this cover of Don't Stop Believing.

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