She's So Much Heavier

MP3 Eddie Hazel / I Want You (She's So Heavy) [Beatles cover, 2004]

Who thought it could get any more indulgent? The original—after layer upon layer of creamy guitar—clocks in at nearly 8 minutes; this version takes that cake plus two more. The parenthetical is slang, of course (unlike in the Smiths's "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" and U2's "Big Girls Are Best"), but shoot me in the back in front of the Dakota if this cover doesn't sound like She's been packing away chocolate mousse and eggs Benedict with sides of whip-cream and butter. Like breakfast at the Madonna Inn.

(Yes, funky sounds do always coax mediocre food comparisons out of me. And, yes, that makes me a bad person.)

Bathtubs for Jeremy (Unfortunately Without Rod Stewart) Complete With Prostitutes

Anglo-Iranian electronica maestra Leila's rendition of a British sitar song about a British wood named Norwegian featuring, presumably, an Italian man. From Blood Looms and Blooms (great album, great title).

Mp3 Leila feat. Luca Santucci / Norwegian Wood (Beatles Cover)

Great story around the song (from Wikipedia). Maybe Lennon and McCartney can compete with Rod in the sleaze challenge:

The lyrics of the song sketch an encounter between the singer and an unnamed girl. They drink wine in her room and talk into the night. However, at 2 A.M. the unnamed girl ceases their flirtation, which the speaker may have been hoping to end in consummation, declaring "it's time for bed", leaving him to crawl off to "sleep in the bath" alone.
"Norwegian Wood" refers to the cheap pinewood that often finished the interiors of working class British flats. The last verse states that the singer lights a fire, the implication being that the singer in fact sets fire to the girl's flat, presumably as revenge for not sleeping with the singer.
McCartney himself states the final line of the song indicates that the singer burned the home of the girl. As he explained:

Peter Asher [brother of McCartney's then-girlfriend Jane Asher] had just done his room out in wood, and a lot of people were decorating their places in wood. Norwegian wood. It was pine, really, just cheap pine. But it's not as good a title, is it, "Cheap Pine"? It was a little parody, really, on those kind of girls who, when you'd get back to their flat, there would be a lot of Norwegian wood. It was completely imaginary from my point of view, but not from John's. It was based on an affair he had. She made him sleep in the bath and then, finally, in the last verse, I had this idea to set the Norwegian wood on fire as a revenge. She led him on and said, "You'd better sleep in the bath." And in our world, that meant the guy having some sort of revenge, so it meant burning the place down....

This exchange took place in a press conference in Los Angeles:

Reporter: I'd like to direct this question to messrs. Lennon and McCartney. In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. And they referred to "Day Tripper" as being about a prostitute...

Paul: Oh yeah.

Reporter: ...and "Norwegian Wood" as being about a lesbian.

Paul: Oh yeah.

Reporter: I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today.

Paul: We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all.

And, as for the Beatles, Ringo is still the sexiest.