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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.

Comments  12

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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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